Don’t ever question the value of volunteers. Noah’s Ark was built by volunteers; the Titanic was built by professionals. – Unknown

Being part of the volunteer leadership at the National Association of REALTORS is a rewarding if strenuous job. It is sometimes complicated by the reactions of people who are impacted by the changes implemented by the association, and sometimes its complicated by people who are observers of the process.  That happened this week.

The Multiple Listing Issues and Policy Committee worked diligently and efficiently at the Mid-Year meetings on recommendations made by the MLS Technology & Emerging Issues Advisory Board, who had in turn been working since last November on a revision to the categorization of services provided by Multiple Listing Services. The modification to the  categorization was needed to define the three classes of services offered by Multiple Listing Services in a manner that was both compliant with the law and reflective of the way business is done in the industry. The categories are :

1. Core - Those services which are integral to every MLS
2. Basic - Those services which an MLS can include as part of the bundle of services all members receive as part of the dues and fees paid by everyone
3. Optional – Any other services which that MLS wishes to offer on a discretionary basis.

As part of the categorization, the issue of Public Facing Websites came up. These are sites operated by an MLS which are a topic of substantial debate. Many large Brokers feel that the MLS public facing web sites are competition for consumer eyes and are not beneficial to their business models. MLSs that provide them feel that they are a wonderful service for the members and a substantial part of their value proposition.

Sounds dry and uninteresting huh? Hard to believe that this topic was the source of sensational headlines and a storm of indignant tweets and accusations of mopery and dopery.  

Within a period of three days there were three articles published by Inman news with decent information but inaccurate and sensational headlines.

“NAR committee endorses public-facing MLS sites as ‘basic’ service”

“NAR may delay action on public-facing MLS sites”

“NAR will allow MLSs to charge members for public-facing websites”

As a participant in the process, it seemed measured, thoughtful , open, and transparent. An example of the democratic process at work in a large association and a shining example of how NAR, through its organization, allowed its diverse membership to have their voices heard.

For a casual observer, the headlines  painted a far different picture.

If  someone were to just review the headlines they  might believe that NAR made an implicit endorsement of public facing websites. In fact, the policy merely acknowledged and clarified the operation of those sites to make sure that they did not run afoul of any anti-trust laws. The second headline looked as if the organization was schizophrenic, reversing the position that they had taken with such vigor just a day before.The truth is that a recommendation from the committee had been neither denied nor defeated, but modified for further review. And the third headline might make one think that NAR had handed a mandate to MLSs everywhere to increase their fees, when there is in reality, no increase in fees mandated by NAR’s action, and no “national” impact on the fees charged by local MLSs.

 Here’s what actually happened;

• In November 2012 the MLS Issues & Policy Committee determined the need for the review of the three categories I mentioned above.
• The MLS Technology & Emerging Issues Advisory Board met briefly and informally after that meeting to discuss how and when the conversation about categorization  would be carried forward.
• A meeting was scheduled and held in Chicago where the Advisory Board and members of staff including Laurie Janik , General Counsel for NAR (and Chief Dragon Slayer for the real estate industry) , discussed changes to recommend to the larger committee. A formal recommendation was drawn up to be presented at the Mid-Year meetings in May.
• Over the next several months, numerous interested groups including brokers, brokerage organizations, MLSs, and organizations of MLS  corresponded with the staff. Copies of all of that correspondence was sent to the advisory board and the committee leadership for their review.
• The leadership of the Advisory Board, MLS Issues and Policy committee  and the appropriate staff members attended several meetings at Mid-Year including a meeting of the Cove Group (the largest MLSs in the country)   and the MLS Association Executives meeting to hear from them.
• It was determined that  the information received required another meeting of the Advisory Board to discuss the additional input, so at 8:15 in the morning, prior to the meeting of the Multiple Listing Issues and Policy Committee, the Advisory Board held another meeting to vote on slightly modified wording to the recommended changes to be presented to that committee.
• During the committee meeting the recommendation and the reasons for the modification were discussed. There was substantial conversation from the floor about the recommendation and the changes, and the recommended changes were approved by an overwhelming majority of the committee.
• As part of  the committee reporting process, all committees with recommended changes to policy report first to the Executive Committee. So the Chair of MLS I&P, the Vice Chair of MLS I&P (yours truly) and the Chair of the Advisory Board presented the recommendation.
• The Executive Committee sent the recommendation to the Board of Directors suggesting that a sentence regarding public facing websites  be sent back to the Advisory Board for further review and revision. This would not have prohibited any MLS from operating a Public Facing Website, but would have merely continued keeping policy silent on that matter.
• The Executive Committee’s action on the reports was presented to the NAR board of directors at the time the committee chairman reported to the directors.
• The directors discussed and debated the MLS Committee’s recommendation as well as the amendment and then they  voted to pass the original recommendation, defeating the amendment proposed by the Executive Committee.

So, you can see that  what was communicated by the headlines as an agenda on the part of the organization itself was actually an open and transparent process in which volunteer leadership worked with staff and received input from a wide variety of stakeholders to develop policy applicable to hundreds of multiple listing services, each of which wants to be allowed to make as many decisions as possible on a local level .

The Web has only  one currency, and you can use any word you want for it valence,extremes,arousal,powerfullness,excitement- but it adds up to false perception – Ryan Holiday – “Trust Me; Confessions of a Media Manipulator“

I don’t fault publishers for wanting headlines that grab the attention of their audience. They are the life blood of internet publishing. But we as readers, professionals, and especially as members of a large national organization, need to delve beneath the headlines. I read Inman news frequently, I have spoken for Inman several times, and I am friends with a number of their writers and staff. I like Inman news as a source in most cases.

The articles under the headlines really got it “mostly right” – and certainly the writer was diligent about updating them as she got more information. In fact, though there were a few points I disagreed with,  I think that a reader who was not biased would have certainly had some idea of what was going on at the meetings, but the headlines make being unbiased difficult.

The ability to avoid false perception is completely in your hands – if you choose to read below the headlines – to reach out to those who might have the information you seek – your association staff, volunteer leadership, or even the writer of that article – you can gain the understanding that you deserve and you need.

And if I can help – I’m easy to find.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. – Confucious

Two days ago, I wrote a blog post about the MLS using Author and Canonical tags to increase the SEO of their member’s sites with Google.The concept is simple, easy and cost effective, has no negative impact on the business practices of the members, and can provide members with a positive benefit of membership in the organization.  The purpose of the post was to start a dialogue about the topic, and it seems to have worked.

In a post yesterday, Matthew Cohen of Clareity Consulting wrote a blog post in which he said , “I received a call from an MLS exec wanting to know if giving agents “Google Credit” for their listings using the canonical tag was really as easy as adding a field to the MLS. The short answer: no. long answer -”  involved several things that I don’t see as creating the problems he suggests exist. Let’s look at them one at a time

Matthew’s first concern? That not every agent has a listings website, so these tags couldn’t be required fields.

To begin, the suggestion was never that agents be given “Google credit”. The suggestion  was to have the Author and Canonical tags added to the MLS feeds which supply the information to  brokerage web sites and third party sites. The attribution would be to the brokerage site since the brokerage actually “owns” the listing according to every state law I am aware of. (I would have said every state without the qualifier, but I haven’t reviewed the real estate regulations of every state, and I want to strive for accuracy) This attribution would increase the SEO of the brokerage sites by telling Google that the listing brokerage was both the source of the content and the creator of the content, both factually accurate statements. Aside from the requirements of Article 12 of the Code of Ethics, and the fact that the statements are accurate, implementing this at the brokerage level is also simpler to implement and more practical for MLSs. As Matthew points out not all agents have web sites, but there are few if any brokerages that have listings but don’t have a web site. Even if there are some infinitesimally small number of brokerages without a web site, that is not a reason for all the other brokerages to suffer a business disadvantage.

The next two items aren’t really objections of complications – they’re just sort of “things”. Matthew suggests that the MLS make sure that “the listing content is found at the URL specified” – something that would be accomplished by the MLS feed itself. Since the suggestion was the addition of the field by the MLS, and the listing is then sent to the broker site by the MLS, this is accomplished with not additional effort.

The second “thing” is something we agree on. The creation of a “national policy” for the implementation of this process. While I would encourage this, and the Trends and Emerging Technologies Advisory Board has already been introduced to this at the last meeting we had in Chicago earlier this year, it is not necessary for an MLS to wait for such a policy before implementing the use of the tags. Large bodies move slowly, and local MLSs can be more agile in this matter. But from here Matthew and I diverge in our approach.

Matthew shows some concern about Broker/Agent disputes over the ownership of the listing.  He says,”Let’s start talking about policy with what websites can be listed as the canonical source. Can a broker demand that agents make the listing URL on the broker site the canonical source? Or should agents put in the URL for the listing on their own site? Can brokers fill it out in their agents’ listings? What if there’s a conflict between broker and agent?”

Now I thought I had answered these questions in my earlier post, but it seems not, so let’s review them. The Broker is the legal owner of the listing. They don’t need to demand anything.They and the agent are both required under Article 12 of the Code to show a true picture, which would require the tags to be on the broker’s site. The tags would be placed automatically in the same way the brokerage names are displayed in the IDX feeds currently, so no one needs to fill it out. As far as conflicts between the agent and broker, the real issue in that case is where the consumer contacts go, something can be handled internally by the business in any manner dictated by their business model. On an agent web site that is not centered on property information, the agent would be, rightfully, the owner of the author and canonical tags so there is no conflict there.  If there is some other conflict between the broker and agent, my guess is the tags will be the smallest part of it.

Matt goes on to ask, “Must it be an IDX website? How about a single property website? Can it be a publisher (ZTR etc.)? If left blank could the MLS fill it in with the MLS public website? Please don’t start arguing on my blog about whether such sites are good or evil – okay? You’ll have enough of that in your own markets.”

Again, I think the simple approach I suggest is the easiest way to resolve this . These tags are placed on every property in the MLS feeds. Third party recipients of the MLS feeds agree under the terms of use that they may not manipulate the tags, so they continue to point to the broker sites. And if it is the decision of the MLS to use the tags for their public facing web site, that is a decision to be made on the local level by the leadership, staff and membership as I have mentioned before. Oh, and by the way, Brokers and Agents who use single property websites are bound by the same Article 12 of the code to create a true picture in their advertising, which means indicating the brokerage again, whether that’s done through an MLS feed or not.

It has to be realized that in the real world, right now, there are companies that are misappropriating these tags and using them for their company SEO, in violation of Article 12. Not because they want to be bad people, but because their obligations have not been made clear to them or their SEO experts are unaware of them. Third parties are routinely misappropriating these tags in an effort to increase their SEO, to the detriment of the businesses that are actually intended by Google to be the “owners” of these tags.  All we would be doing is to create some order out of the chaos that exists in the marletplace.

Another concern was the technical implementation “Now comes the horrifying bit – where policy makers realize that there must be no field value until the canonical source website actually has the listing on it – and that may be 15 minutes from finalizing listing input in the MLS – but it’s more likely one to three days.”

Since the MLS feed is the source of the data on the brokerage site, and the field is part of the property data, this is a self-curing problem. The tags would be added and sent as part of the MLS feed. As the field is published and made part of the feed,  it is sent to all of the sites in question, so the website that is being named always has the data when its named. Any lag in the publication will be minimal and is not a matter of great concern.

There are a few simple items that follow, a call for the fields to have a common name throughout the industry – making this part of  IDX compliance and  publisher “report cards” (something already discussed earlier) , as well as marketing this to the MLS members as part of the MLS value proposition. All good ideas, and all common sense, but all of them are just part of a thoughtful implementation.

The “Great Syndication Wars” of the early 21st century are far from over, and it is a slow week when there is not a conversation or article or blog post and IDX feeds, syndication and the role of the MLS published somewhere by someone who talks about the challenge real estate companies face in being found by the real estate consumer. And it is even a slower week when a real estate agent of broker doesn’t receive a number of email solicitations from individuals or companies that claim to be able to increase their SEO through some arcane manipulation of the interwebz to foil Google’s attempts to return relevant results to consumers where their search engine is employed. But Google’s value proposition to consumers lies, in great degree, in their ability to provide relevant search results, and they work diligently to make sure that the efforts to “tilt the playing field” are countered so that the most relevant returns are provided on every search.

One of the ways Google ensures relevancy is through Author and Canonical tags. These tags provide information about what piece of content published to the web is the “original” and who the author of a specific piece of content is. By adding 2 fields to the property data collected by the MLS, we would increase the SEO for the web site of the real estate firm who has the listing for that property. every participating broker would immediately increase the relevance of their web site in Google’s eyes, making them more likely to be found by a consumer looking for property in their marketplace.

The technical conversation about these two tags has already been started by Gahlord Dewald in his Inman news column. Since Gahlord and my friend Mark Lesswing of NAR were my two “go to guys” about the technical feasibility of this, I would suggest reading those columns if you have any questions about how this works – my purpose here is to discuss the business benefits to the industry and how this could be implemented to benefit the members of every MLS in the country.

Of course, every action raises questions about the whys and wherefores, and what better place to ask and answer some of those questions than right here.

Why Should we do this?

The first and most obvious answer is that we should do this because it is the right thing to do and it helps present a “true picture” as required under Article 12 of the NAR Code of Ethics. Further it benefits the members of the MLS at little or no cost. Every brokerage that has a web site wants that website to be found by consumers. Assigning the author and canonical tags to the listing broker provides every one of those brokerage websites with additional SEO.

Why should the Listing Brokerage receive any SEO benefit from the use of the tags?

Why not? Without the participation of these brokerages there would be no “stock” for the MLS, and nothing for the consumer to see. Doing this is no different that adding the name of the listing broker to every one of their listings that are displayed, as every MLS already does. Doing this merely tells Google in a meaningful way what the MLS mandates as part of their listing display.

Why  Brokerage sites instead of Agent’s web sites?

The first reason and the most compelling is that the legal relationship between the client and the real estate firm is based on their relationship with the brokerage. The second is that its far easier to implement and police. And finally, if the business model of the brokerage is such that they wish the consumer contacts generated by the web site to be distributed to the listing agents, its an easy matter for them to do so. Frankly, with the amount of concern about dual agency that I hear expressed all the time, distributing the consumer contacts to people other than the listing broker may be more prudent, but in any case, its an internal matter for each company.

Are we providing an unfair advantage for some brokerages over others?

Actually, vis a vis their relationship to each other, adding these tags is a “zero sum” game for the member brokers. While the brokerages with larger listing inventory benefit from the publication of a larger number of tags than offices with smaller listing inventories, if everyone gets some benefit from the use of tags on their listings , the impact is really seen in competition with websites that do not have the benefit of the use of author and canonical tags on the listing display information. In other words, the brokerage web sites gain more advantage over non-brokerage web sites than they do over each other.

Why Would Real Estate Brokerages Want their MLS to Add these fields to the IDX Feed?
By adding these fields, the listing broker would be seen by Google as a trusted source of property information, and the originator of new property information content every time a new listing is added to the IDX feed. It would, at no expense to them increase their SEO, and make their web site more relevant in the “eyes” of Google, making it easier for consumers to find.

Why Would an MLS Want to do This?
The integrity of property data is a primary concern of the MLS. Many of the rules and regulations of local MLSs are designed to insure that the information published is as accurate as possible. The publication of the listing brokerage in the author and canonical ages is nothing more than additional data accuracy. It is the equivalent of adding the listing broker name on each property in the IDX feed.

In addition. the MLS exists for the benefit of its members, to facilitate cooperation in real estate and act as a n engine to increase market efficiency in a fractured marketplace. Helping members achieve better SEO for their sites, at no cost to the MLS is a no-brainer. What MLS wants to take the position that it is uninterested in benefiting its members? What benefit could be better than increasing the ability of the consumer to find the member’s website? Even MLSs with public facing websites generally send the traffic directly to the listing company’s web site, and this is merely an extension of that philosophy

How would it Work?

It is really very simple. The tags are two extra fields added to each property in the feed. The cost of adding them is minimal, and the execution is really simple.Two simple fields identify the author and the canonical tags, they are opaque so they cannot be changed, they are placed in the idx fields supplied to syndicators with the restriction that if they (the syndicators) change the fields they lose the data feed, and the members each , in their own idx feeds get the tags that identify their site as the one deserving of trust and authority befitting the owner of those tags on their listing

Why Does The MLS Need to be Involved?

The MLS is the obvious mechanism for assuring inserting the tags and assuring that the tags are correct on each listings. The tags could be added the same way the Broker’s name is added to each listing. NAR’s code of ethics already prohibits placing misleading meta-tags, and the MLS can help members conform to the COE by automating this process for them. As the provider of IDX and MLS data feeds to syndicators, the MLS can also assure that Non-members don;t manipulate or modify these tags by making that a condition of the IDX feed. If the entities receiving the feed, or their affiliates, manipulate those fields, they lose the feed. Since most of them have business models that require an MLS data feed, they will certainly not risk losing it over something so simple.

Why would an MLS not want to be involved?

I truly don’t know. Perhaps they are distrustful of change. Perhaps they have some concern about how the aggregators might react. Perhaps the leadership is afraid of change. Or possibly because they are skeptical of ideas that originate from others. Perhaps they are waiting for others to do it before they try it. But every MLS executive I’ve spoken to face to face, ends the conversation by understanding how little it would cost, how much it will help their members, and how easy it would be to implement. So maybe we’ll get lucky and we won;t even need to have this questions raised…

What will this mean to ZIllow, Trulia, Realtor.com, and other sites?.

It means far less to them than it does to the brokerages across the country. They have groups of tech people whose job is to maximize their SEO. They are tech companies with long term strategies about reaching the consumer. This will require an adjustment for them, but nothing that will destroy their business or harm their income. Brokers on the other hand will receive a far more substantial benefit from the additional ongoing relevance this will provide to their sites while they are busy doing what they do best – listing and selling real estate.

Well, that’s all the questions I could think of. If you have more questions or comments on how best to promote the use of the author and canonical tags, I would love to hear them.

Affaires Plus – Sex, Lies and Mortgage by kelly schykulski

I spent much of my time as a real estate agent working for a small real estate office operated by a would-be never-was attorney who never built a large real estate operation, but had a great deal of real estate knowledge. I learned a lot about the real estate business from him through conversation since there was no training program. Training and education I obtained on my own. But whenever I needed to solve a problem or understand a situation I found myself in , he would exhort me to see the whole picture, instead of just a portion of it – a practice that everyone could employ to improve their lives.

The Multiple Listing Service, an integral part of the real estate industry,  seems to be the target or a lot of fragmentary conversation. People discuss the MLS and third-party real estate advertisers as if they were the same thing. Discussions about who has the most accurate data, what is best for consumers (read “buyers”), pocket listings (properties listed by agents but not yet submitted to the MLS) and MLS regulations swirl around Facebook with the violence of tornadoes or hurricanes.   Many of these discussions seem to have that partial vision, so I hoped that this post might serve to add some clarity.  I believe that part of the problem is a lack of understanding about the purpose of the mechanisms involved and part is the result of a bad use of words.

The real estate market is horribly inefficient. There are literally millions of sellers and buyers using hundreds of thousands companies and agents to buy, sell, and rent real property. The MLS was developed to create greater market efficiency for real estate agents through the mutual exchange of information. It made real estate companies and their agents more efficient because all market participants received and acted on relevant market information as soon as it became available.

As the MLS developed as a business tool it went from 3×5 cards on a cork board at weekly luncheons to printed cards and books collecting and sorting the information by area and company, to computer databases shared by its members. But its purpose never changed. In fact, the MLS Policies suggested by NAR, and used by most of the 970 MLSs states, “The purpose of multiple listing is the orderly correlation and dissemination of listing information to participants so they may better serve the buying and selling public.” - seems simple doesn’t it?

With the profusion of public facing web sites fueled by IDX feeds from these MLSs, confusion began to reign among the members of the industry. Now part of the conversation centers around the purpose of the various real estate web sites operated by real estate professionals and others.

There are only two reasons for any public facing real estate website.

• To gather consumer information for distribution to real estate professionals -

  • Whether the site is operated by a brokerage or a “lead generation” company, or an aggregator who sells advertising on their site to agents and companies, reaching the buyers and sellers or real estate is a core purpose of public facing real estate sites.
  • In some instances, the sites gather the information for other associated industries like the mortgage industry want to reach the consumer as early as possible,

• To gather consumer attention to generate advertising revenue

  • In today’s attention economy, views and clicks translate into millions of dollars. Aside from the obvious sale of this space to real estate professionals and others interested in advertising there, sites gather visitors to places like Yahoo and AOl by providing people with real estate information.

The idea that any of these sites are there to benefit the public is just silly. No one enters into a commercial venture without wanting to have it be succesful – which in the world of business means to generate income. I’m not saying that while we are pursuing this primary goal we can’t do a lot of good things, or that we can’t be well motivated, but we should never forget why we go to work and do the things we do there – We do it to earn a living, provide for our families, and keep our business ventures healthy.

The second problem we have is a certain confusion about data accuracy. In the movie Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya says “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”. In the great MLS accuracy debate, (which I think is more of a red herring than anything else) people keep using the word “accurate” when they mean “complete”.

Let’s start with two definitions.

Accurate:  free from error especially as the result of care <an accurate diagnosis>

Complete:  having all necessary parts, elements, or steps <a complete diet>

So we can have four-things a set of data that is both accurate and complete, a set that is accurate but not complete, a set that is complete but not accurate, and we can have data that is neither accurate nor complete. But they are not all the same thing. They are very different.

Data accuracy is a matter of GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) – In other words, since all of our property data relies upon agent input (which is subject to inaccuracies) or public records created by huge  numbers of municipal employees with varying degrees of  accuracy, our entire dataset will probably always be inaccurate to some degree. With a million real estate agents responsible for data input, there are a million opportunities for mis-typing, mis-casting information, making inaccurate measurements, etc, etc. So practically, we are eons away from making our data truly accurate.

There is some issue of data accuracy for third-party sites because of their need to accumulate data that they don’t own or originate. It has resulted in a willingness to accept any data that they can acquire. That leads to additional inaccuracy resulting from duplicate property data from different sources leading to duplication and contradiction. But since they aren’t selling real estate,  its more important for them to have lots of data so they can appear to have a dataset valuable to the consumer. In their world, it is more important to be visible than it is to actually be accurate as long as they don’t end up discouraging consumers from visiting their site as a result. After all they are selling consumer information and advertising – not real estate.

Data completeness (which is often referred to erroneously as accuracy) is the second issue.

The MLS, without question, has the most complete dataset available to the real estate industry. Data aggregators like AOL, Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com are faced with having less than a complete dataset becuase they are trying to compile a national datasetcompiled from the  more complete local datasets. Since they don’t have access to all of them, their national dataset is far less accurate that the data feeds sent locally to the MLS members, who get the complete local dataset from the MLS through their IDX feed . Please note that the difference here is created at least partially by the difference between the local dataset and the attempt to create a national dataset.

A second less than complete dataset on public webs sites is created when a real estate company chooses not to advertise some portion of the complete dataset they have received – for example not publishing properties under a certain price point, or not including certain types of homes or certain areas where the company doesn’t choose to do business. But the decision to publish this less than complete dataset is business driven, probably accomplishes what the company wants to accomplish, and is therefore (within reason) accurate as possible, and effective for their business. Is it a good idea or a bad one? That would depend on how you want to run your business. – something which is neither my concern nor the MLS’s.

So can we not confuse IDX feed with what we do with the IDX feed? And not confuse the IDX used by brokers with the feeds furnished to the aggregators? Or confuse the MLS with public facing sites using housing data to attract the attention of consumers – using whatever strategy the owner of the site thinks is most propitious?  Or worry about how much of the MLS data we are going to find useful in our daily business? Those are just business choices, and not a function of the system itself.

Whatever your business model , if you are a real estate professional, the MLS is crucial to the facilitation of your business. Public facing web sites, whether operated by you or a third-party, exist as advertising outlets – nothing more or less. If they all disappeared tomorrow, people would still want to gain housing information and we would want to supply. But without the cooperative sharing of data between professionals, the industry would grind to shuddering and painful halt. The exchange of information between professionals is crucial – the exchange of information between the industry and the consumer, not as much.  Housing is the ultimate shiny object for consumers, and they will seek that information any way that is available to them from driving around looking for signs to searching any site that promises the information they want. They will be in a number of places depending on the day, the weather, their mood, or the device they are using to reach the data, so reaching them is more about strategies and tactics than it is about creativity.

Ok, now let’s get back to those discussions on Facebook

In a couple of recent threads there were almost 400 comments on one of them, generated by a simple question leading to a  long and harsh conversation, with secret emails, people bragging about the size of their response,  and people blocking each other.

An argument erupted between people that think the best web strategy is working a social strategy (blogging, Facebook, Tweeting etc) and people that favor the use of property search and SEO strategies to generate “leads”. Sadly, each camp oversimplified the business, and as a result, each make long passionate arguments about their point of view without realizing that they and the other party were talking past each other rather than to each other, both trying to make the point that they knew what works to improve your online business.

What doesn’t work to improve your online business is arguing in Facebook groups or making personal attacks. Too often statements made in these groups are made by people that who are armed with an opinion and an attitude, but don’t have a clue. And they get nasty for reasons that are not readily apparent. No one has ever been convinced of anything because you tell them that you’re great and they’re stupid. It may be that Trolls have decided to leave their traditional dwelling places under bridges and move to real estate Facebook groups, but you don’t have to engage them. Small people with small lives derive great pleasure from making themselves seem more important in public. There is no business benefit in helping them. So let’s talk about why people were so divided over the topic.

The divisiveness results, in my opinion, from simplistic thinking. Not simple – which is good, but simplistic. Simplistic, an adjective is defined as;

1 characterized by extreme simplicity; naive

2 oversimplifying complex problems; making unrealistically simple judgments or analyses

The two sides talk about “leads” or “buyers” as if they were commodity both monolithic and acquired by only one right set of activities. That’s naive. The “leads” we talk about are people. Complex and infinitely diverse, people are any thing but monolithic. No matter how hard we wish, there is no one type of buyer and no one simple and easy path to attract them. Because of this diversity, there are lots of different things that work for salespeople who want to connect with consumers through online activities, and therein lies three simple facts;

1. There are a variety of strategies that can successfully generate consumer relationships
2. Different strategies attract different types of consumers
3. The execution of the strategy is far more important than the choice of strategy

There have always been salespeople that relied upon referral business generated by the people they interacted with in their community. They were the joiners, the neighborhood volunteers, the PTA Presidents and the Little League coaches. Through their network of relationships, they generated a great deal of business, mostly through word of mouth marketing or direct relationships. And there have always been salepeople that prospected or advertised to meet people who were at some point in the sales cycle, preferably close to action. Years ago these people placed property ads, canvassed homeowners and tenants,  held home buyer & seller seminars, used direct mail or handed out flyers , just listed,  and just sold cards. Both of them generated business, and each of them was completely convinced that they were doing the best thjing possible for their business.

Today those two styles of salespeople look for business differently on the web.  The agent who prefers to work by referral or with people that  they already have a relationship with are the salespeople that build online relationships through blogging, Facebook, and numerous other social activities, so that they are a trusted member of their online communities, and become the trusted source of real estate information when their friends need them. In today’s world these are the evangelists of Seth Godin’s permission marketing, or Hubspot‘s Inbound Marketing. It is a strategy that can be very useful for an established agent with a large sphere of influence, who wants to be sure that they are easily found online by people specifically looking for them.

The second type of agent tends to seek an initial contact through property data, relying on SEO and SEM, and “lead generation” sites that introduce them to consumers with whom they have no relationship other than the property data. They fight the fight to be found among the myriad of property data sites by buying keywords, or trying to ran for less competitive but still valuable Long Tail keywords relevant to their specific markets. Sometimes they are the proponents of buying placement on Zillow, Trulia or Realtor.com or using “lead generation” websites or third party companies. For these people, search, not content is king.

The two schools argue with a great deal of passion and each has lots of people to quote when they want to make a point. The fact is that either strategy can generate substantial amounts of business if they are executed properly. I have friends who generate most of their business through their social connections, and I know a substantial number of people who do little of that and generate most of their sales opportunities through their property web sites, or by paying or premium placement on an aggregator’s site, or possibly by paying a referral or buying leads  from another intermediary.

Because of the proliferation of property search sites, and the intense competition for the finite number of consumer eyes, I tend to favor the social strategy for individual agents, since building relationships and connecting with people on line is simple for people who are accustomed to creating relationships in the physical world. The cost is not too great, and the strategy is generally simple and sustainable.  That being said, I also think that offering property search as a feature on your social site, or in conjunction with your blog is not a bad thing to do – but the property search is more of an accommodation for the consumer than a draw for their attention.Just like the differing strategies of salespeople in the past, both  strategies work and neither program is the “right program” unless its the “right program” for you.

Whatever your web strategy is, the return it brings to you should be how you determine whether or not it needs to be tweaked, modified, or abandoned. Some form of measurement or analytic needs to be applied to any strategy before we decide its right for us. SEO strategies are easy to monitor through Google analytics  and the number of inquiries and conversions they generate.  Social strategies tend to have be more difficult to analyze except in terms of community size and interaction. If you are blogging and you have lots of visitors to the blog, and your blog is referring business to your business web site, that could be a metric you might use. You can use social scoring tools like Klout, Kred, Peerindex and Onlineidcalculator to determine how easy it is for consumers to find you online.

Whatever you choose, be sure that your core business skills are strong because a great web presence will not compensate for a lack of skill or a poor work ethic – in the final analysis, it will all come down to the value you provide to your clients, and your execution of the job you were hired for. Whatever you choose, I wish you the best of luck in your efforts.

Looking for the best listing presentation in the business. Modern, clean, beautiful graphs and charts, showcases the importance of digital marketing, social and mobile etc… Preferably iPad ready too. Easy ask right? If you have one you think fits the bill let me know. I want to steal it, tweak it and then give it away to the entire community to use for free.

Not only is the request , on the surface, easy, it is generous since Chris will bring back the new and improved  listing presentation to be shared by the community. The problem is Chris is asking the real estate community to deliver him a Unicorn (or a Jackalope, a Yeti , or an honest politician  – pick your mythical creature) so he can dress it up and give it back. I don’t think that can work and I’ll tell you why.

Listing presentations are very personal. Listing presentations are not about price, cost, technology or “sizzle”, they are about answering four questions;

1. Why should I use a REALTOR?
2. Why should I use your brand?
3. Why should I use your company?
4. Why should I use you?

The questions get modified a little – if you’re a multi-office firm, the question might be ;

1. Why should I use a real estate professional?
2. Why should I use your brand?
3. Why should I use your company?
4. Why should I use your office?
5. Why should I use you?

If you’re not a REALTOR they might be ;

1. Why should I use a real estate professional?
2. Why should I use your brand?
3. Why should I use your company?
4. Why should I use you?

The purpose of a listing presentation is to present a value package to the consumer that will explain to them the benefits of listing their property. As a result an effective listing presentation must answer these questions. To be most effective, they need to be answered in order, so the answer to each question (though they will vary from company to company and agent to agent) supports, leverages and prepares the consumer for the next question, reminds them of the earlier benefits posited  and helps them walked through the mental process  of choosing the presenter as the real estate professional to represent them. Why can’t they be answered in a really snazzy template? Because the answers to each question differs more and more as the presentation becomes more and more supportive of the strengths of the brand , the company, the office and the agent are developed into a logical presentation.

Answering the first question is the closest to generic, since we assume everyone making the listing presentation is a REALTOR or real estate professional. But even that one needs to be customized to the needs of the consumer. The conversation might be need to stress the benefits of third party negotiation. It might be about the additional safety a consumer receives when potential visitors to their home are screened through the qualification process. If the seller is considering listing the home privately, it might be about the additional exposure that is obtained by utilizing the network of MLS members as opposed to the one sign, one ad, one website approach of a FSBO. Or perhaps the benefit that needs to be stressed are the legal, financial and title expertise the real estate professional brings to the process.

The second question has far wider variations. The Brand may be independent , regional broker, or a national franchise. Each one has things to recommend themselves, and therefore the presentation of each one would differ. But the benefits of the specific brand need to be added to the already demonstrated benefits of the use of the real estate professional.

The specific company benefits are then added to the mix, with the value package being further refined. For example of you are a multi-office firm with a large national franchise, your value package is different than if you are a large regional , or perhaps a national firm like the NRT. Then the benefit of the local office location, or neighborhood experience, or history comes into the mix.

The final question, answered only after you have answered all of the above questions, is why use the specific agent, and the reasons for this and the value package involved varies from person to person. Perhaps the benefit is that the agent is new and aggressive  and the listing will be an important part of their inventory, providing the seller with more attention, and more effort. Or it might be that the agent is older and more epxperienced, with an in depth knowledge of the area and the property type. We could go on and on, but I’m sure you see the point by now.

There have been attempts to create generic listing packages for years. From simple flip charts, to customizable multi-media laptop presentations to PowerPoint and Pdf table presentations, someone always seems ready to provide a template for real estate agents to use for a small or reasonable fee. None of them are complete, and none of them are really more than templates for salespeople to use after extensive customization. Butas long as there are people that don’t understand the purpose of the listing presentation clearly,people will look for simple answers to the complex questions that consumers need answered. And while they do that, people that answer the questions above will be out making presentations to answer those questions, and them listing the properties they want.

TRUISM

: an undoubted or self-evident truth; especially : one too obvious for mention

- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Several things, in my experience fall into the above category. For example a truism is; Everyone thinks they work hard.  When was the last time you heard someone talking about what they did for a living and heard them say ” I’m really stealing the money at this job – I don’t have to do a thing. If I didn’t have to stay awake so I knew when it was time to go home, I could just nap all day!” More likely, you’ll hear someone complain about how hard work was, or how they’re looking forward to the weekend so they can relax.

Does it make sense to you that the guy who works outside in all kinds of weather moving heavy objects, or building things, and the guy who stands behind the counter at Target, working the register are working equally hard? Or is it that their perspectives make them believe that they’re each working as hard as they can. Odd that we all have different jobs and yet we all share the same complaints. 

A second truism? Everyone thinks they have a good sense of humor. I know this is not true because I have an amazing sense of humor, and yet there are those people who don’t find humor in as many places as I do. Again, our differing perspectives come into play, assuring us that we are right in our choices. You want a simple example? There are any number of smart discerning women that don’t think the Three Stooges are funny, and yet, almost every man, no matter their varying intellectual prowess finds Larry, Moe and and the third Stooge funny, In fact, men can have long and involved intellectual arguments about who was the best “3rd stooge”  Shemp, Curly, or Curly Joe (Stooge aficionados please note that they are listed chronologically)

And now for the Third Truism – Every real estate professional thinks they give great customer service, even if they don’t. In fact, real estate professionals talk a lot about their customer service, and all of those conversation seem to focus on what a great job they do. Whenever there is a discussion about what real estate professionals do, providing high quality service goes straight to center stage. And yet I’m not sure that every one of the people in the conversation is providing the same type or even level of customer service.

Certainly most of us are more available than a sales job warrants, answering phone calls seven days a week at odd hours and interrupting family time (until we learn better) to respond to customer inquiries.  Most real estate professionals know how to be polite when they respond to customer inquiries or needs, but is that really what customer service is about?

Recently I was flying to Canada to speak at the Bannf Western Connection (a really great real estate event you should attend if you are able to ). My original flight was delayed, and rather than disappointing the people who were expecting me to speak the following day, I called USAirways and they booked an alternate flight on a Air Canada. I had two hours before that flight, so I went right to the gate as I was instructed.There was no one present at the gate.

Since you need to check in 1 hour before an international flight, I kept walking around the gate area, waiting for anyone to show up. I had a confirmation number and  I figured they would resolve it when they arrived. Forty-five minutes before the flight was due to board, a short bald man with a big moustache (think “Monopoly Guy”)  and a United logo on his shirt showed up, and I explained my situation. When I gave him my confirmation number he said “They needed to give you the ticket number, I can’t do anything with that” as if I were trying to make his day miserable (see the earlier part of the post about working hard) . I called USAirways again and they gave me a new ticket number. When I tried to give it to him he told me I needed to wait because he needed to move people on the computer to upgrade them. I waited until he finished and gave him the ticket number at which time he smiled at me without warmth and said “You can’t board the plane because you weren’t here an hour before take off”. As I pointed out to him that he was not there an hour before flight time , and he began to argue, a gentlemen who worked for Air Canada who was there to assure compliance with all the appropriate regulations told him to allow me to board and I was able to make the flight.

Monopoly Guy was the perfect example of form before function – he smiled, was polite, and was absolutely useless to me as a customer. He not only provided no service to me as a customer, he actually created un-needed roadblocks. But when he went home that night, I am sure of two things. He felt that he had worked a really hard day, and he felt that he provided the customer service required of his job.

But there are the other people. The ones that deliver without asking. Forget Monopoly Guy and think Olympic Champion. Gold Medal winners.

A friend of mine recently had a medical procedure. Taking out the trash they had an “incident” and ended up getting a pacemaker. Oddly the part of the experience that stayed with them the most was not the ambulance ride, the procedure, or the recovery. It was a conversation  - ”I met the medical sales tech rep guy this morning. REALLY interesting conversation. He goes to every single procedure for 7 hospitals…5 days on, 24 hours a day. We talked for an hour about responsiveness and client service. He comes in for the procedure, then he comes back the next day. He’s been with the same company for 15 years.”

There’s no commercial value to this service. The sale was made, the pacemaker installed. But this man understands the value of exceptional customer service, and is dedicated to providing it  to increase satisfaction and a better experience. That is why exceptional customer service is provided. Not to make the sale, but as part of the mission of the firm and its representatives. This is substance over form. Great service provided without being requested.

My friend, who should have written this post, summed it up very well  ”When does someone truly impress you? Does it have to be a Ritz-Carlton concierge at a 5 star resort? Or can a pretty regular guy go about his business of selling gadgets that literally save someone’s life. Because that’s what we sometimes miss in the real estate business. We’re not quite as important as cardiac surgeons, but we do reach deep into people’s personal lives…into their homes and families and possessions and bank accounts. As crude as it may sound, we touch their stuff.”

What do you do to truly impress the people you serve?

Chicken Little, 1943

Foxy Loxy : “This is the Voice of Doom speaking! Special bulletin! Flash! The sky is falling! A piece of it just hit you on the head! Now be calm. Don’t get panicky. Run for your life!”  - Chicken Little , 1943

Ours is a business that seems to simultaneously embrace and fear the future. Any new business model that gets national attention becomes the topic of passionate conversation about why it will or won’t change the way consumers buy property. Experimentation in the business is not really new,but the appearance of online communities where we can discuss the matter, worrying away at each new idea like a dog gnawing on a bone, allows even minor aberrations to assume the importance of major business shifts.

Recently Redfin, a VC based real estate firm with a reputation for innovation due to an employee based agent model, consumer discounts, agent reviews, a high profile blog and a very smooth web presence, recently announced the publication of real-time” Offer Insights” ,  which they describe as “real-time statistics and notes from Redfin agents about thousands of offers submitted on behalf of our clients”. Within 3 days a blog post from a Massachusetts Attorney specializing in real estate appeared raising the issues of confidentiality and ethics issues that might arise from the program, and a conversation had started on Facebook debating the Pros and Cons of the program.

While the conversation talked about transparency and consumer oriented thinking, to me its just more of the same old stuff. One company trying to find a way to drive consumers to their site and their agents as opposed to another. Redfin writes “ We publish Offer Insights throughout Redfin.com, showing nearby deals when you look at an individual property but also highlighting juicy details about pending sales as you browse our map of listings…And if you want more detail about an Offer Insight, you only have to ask, via an online form associated with each Insight. The Redfin agent who wrote the offer will respond to your questions, usually via email, usually within a few hours” Makes a lot more sense now doesn’t it? We’ll give you “juicy details” if you give us a way to contact you. Not so futuristic when its viewed that way – just another way to gain consumer attention. And not salacious at all (Groan!)

Redfin, like any other company is motivated , at their core, by a desire to be profitable and grow. And that’s fine, but professionals need not to react to every new thing thing as if the world was ending, and all the rules of the game have changed overnight. We should analyze new business techniques, and to try to understand not only what they are, but what the business reason for them is, and whether there will be any real change in the industry as a result. We should be directed by our core business vision and not become “other-directed” if we wish to succeed in our chosen field. 

I don’t see “Offer Insights” as anything approaching “game changer” status. In fact, other than the publicity it might generate, and the potential for inquiries from curious consumers, I don;t see it as a great idea. The “insights” that I have read are anecdotal, subjective, and don’t contain really valuable information.  Frankly, except for the potential for  bad communication of the facts of the matter, I wouldn’t think of it as a listing agent. With that concern however, I might be more directed in how I advise a seller to respond to an offer from an agent who tells me in advance that they might be sharing the details of a transaction that my seller might wish to be confidential . And I certainly would be extremely careful about my communications to the Redfin agent, possibly denying them information as a result of a concern that it might appear online as an insight of some sort.

….So as I took a break from writing this post to actually be in the real estate business today,  I got a call from a  Redfin agent in my market who has buyers interested in a listing of mine. She asked if we had previous offers on the property, or if there were any other interested parties. My immediate response was to be cautious about what information I made available to her because I was conscious that anything I might say could later be included in an anecdotal memoir that I would have no ability to review for factual content. I told her that I was not comfortable discussing current or previous offers since I did not know how they would be typified in the offers insight program, and I didn’t want to enter into a conversation that might at some point be detrimental to my client. I know it was the first time she heard that, but I wonder if it will be the last….She was a little taken aback since she wasn’t really familiar with the program, though she was very supportive of her company  and explained that the CEO of Redfin must be comfortable with potential impact of the program. I explained that though I have the greatest respect for her CEO, his diligent research can’t stop him from making a mistake, and it certainly doesn’t relieve me of my obligations to my clients.

I don’t know what the result of Redfin’s new program will be. It may make cooperation with their agents more difficult as co-op agents try to avoid potential ethical or moral dilemmas. It might provide consumers with partially accurate anecdotal information that could help or damage their home buying negotiations. It may drive traffic to their site or litigation to their doors. But I do think that it is less effective as a tool for consumer education than it is positioned to be, and I don’t believe that provides as much guidance as an experienced real estate agent can provide to their buyer clients about the negotiation process.

What do you think?

When I started my real estate career, I worked mostly with buyers. I was young, and working with buyers just seemed simple. People called our office looking for homes, but they generally didn’t buy the home they called on, and I became adept at helping them to find the home they wanted. Buyer agency hadn’t yet become “a thing”, and most of my work was actually as a sub-agent of the seller, but since I was working with the buyer, I considered my self “their agent” (please spare me the discussions about agency law, this was in the dark ages and we didn’t know better then).

The real estate industry has evolved. Buyers now have access to property information without relying on a real estate professional,  and  the world recognizes buyer representation as a specialty for agents, but those changes have brought with them certain issues of their own. Not just the reliance of consumers on the partial or inaccurate property information provided by aggregators, but the abdication of the property search function by real estate professionals who want to save themselves time or make themselves more efficient. When real estate professionals hear that the majority of consumers search for homes online, some react by thinking that the job of finding the home has become the province of the consumer rather than their agent.

Recently, someone representing themselves as a consumer posted in one of NAR’s Facebook groups. She said;

Looking for a realtor that is actually willing to do some work for the money they’d be paid to represent me. I found a so-called “buyer’s agent” at REBAC.net and have just discovered she expects me to take first look at all of the properties w/o her. If that were the only problem, I wouldn’t mind, but she won’t answer basic questions and completely ignored my requests to get appointments with owners or seller’s agents to see homes that are occupied, and instead of answering questions about the size of lots she gave me a link to a parcel tax/plot map database for the county that does not work.

Can someone tell me what exactly does a buyer’s agent do and not do for the buyer? Are they only there for you AFTER you’ve chosen the property you want to buy? I thought they were supposed to help you FIND properties by helping you get appointments to see them AND help you get answers to questions you have regarding properties. I tried doing it alone but I can’t get listing agents to give me information either. They either ignore my questions or recommend I get an agent to represent me. Well, I’ve tried that and I get no help so I’m lost.

This is not an isolated problem. I’ve been searching for properties in several states and EVERY realtor I’ve contacted in the last few years has either ignored me, given me the run around, or proven to not be willing to do much of anything for me.

Sadly, for this consumer, there is no better answer than to  find another agent.

Real estate is no different than any other service profession. You need to interview people until you find one you can connect with, and though it may consume some time, we are not all alike.  Like any other search, its worth taking the time to find someone who suits you and your needs. A person who recognizes that working with a buyer really hasn’t changed much since the business began, except for the addition of specific legal responsibility derived from more sophisticated agency laws.  Like any other industry, you need to spend the time to find the right person to represent you. What do Buyer’s agents do for you? That’s simple.

1. They spend time finding out your needs, desires and motivation to purchase, helping you to meld your desires with the realities of the marketplace and your financial capabilities.
2. They should be the primary source of property information, utilizing their access to the complete listed inventory to help you find properties more efficiently than you can by yourself, sorting through online advertising sites.
3. They help you by making suggestion to you based upon their inspection of homes in the area, to either broaden or narrow your home search as needed.
4. They should use their well developed area knowledge to help you sort through the quantities of property on the market, making suggestion to you based upon their inspection of homes in the area.
5. They help you understand the difference between features and benefits , alerting you to the possibility of achieving your life style needs with different feature sets than you had imagined.
6. They continually help you to focus on ever smaller groups of homes until you have honed your search to a laser sharp focus.
7. When you have found a property, they should help you through the negotiation process, and the preparation of the forms for your offer.
8. As your agent they should be your adviser and advocate throughout the home buying process.

For the “buyer agents” that are missing the opportunity to work with consumers like this one? My advice to you is simple. Don’t abdicate your job as the source of real property information, or send your clients out to look for themselves. To do that is the equivalent of opening a restaurant and asking people to cook their meals for themselves. As real estate professionals , we should know how to locate appropriate properties more efficiently and effectively than our clients can for a number of reasons. We have superior access to property information through the “business end” of our MLS. We should have  superior local knowledge of the marketplace, and be better able to find properties that are suitable for our clients to review because we do this every day, and our experience in showing, listing and selling homes should provide us with a better knowledge base to use on behalf of our buyers. Because we are not as emotionally involved int he process, we can also provide valuable insights about the properties and the process that benefit the consumer immensely.

We may not be the gateway to property data, but reviewing, interpreting, and submitting property information to the consumer is still a key part of any agent’s job. Do it right and everyone benefits – ignore it or do it poorly and your client and your career will suffer.

Its a place where opinions fly freely at the speed of light, some well informed, some not so much. Michael McClure, the group’s admin does his best to ask provocative questions to keep the conversation going, and he recently asked this one:

My first thought was – ” Houses are inanimate objects. Of course they don’t sell themselves. If you don’t think you sell anything, perhaps you should be looking for a different line of work.” But as I typed that, I reflected that even though the statement is completely true , perhaps it was a little harsh as a response to Michael’s efforts to move the conversation along – and my position might need a deeper explanation.

I began my career in real estate as a job hating salesperson. I didn’t think much of salespeople in general. I felt that they were,  for the most part,  fast talking, manipulative and only focused on making the sale. In short, I had the same view most non-salespeople (and many salespeople) have of the profession.  I knew that I would be different, and that I would show them homes until they found the one they wanted, and they would then buy the house without my needing to sell them anything. I would never be pushy or agressive, and my buyers would make their own minds up. As a result I was an unsuccessful salesperson.  And when I say I was unsuccessful, I mean that I neither earned a good living nor effectively or efficiently helped buyers to find their dream homes.

Luckily, I became a professional salesperson and learned to be extremely successful in both earning a living and helping others.  In fact, learning to be a salesperson required my learning a number of skills that helped me grow both professionally and personally.  Most people don’t understand what a salesperson is or what they do.  I was recently in a conversation about sales with a group of people who that included a large number of non-salespeople, one of whom said during the conversation “Aren’t we all salespeople?” – No, we are not all salespeople, and the only person who would ever say that is someone who doesn’t sell for a living and really doesn’t understand the depth of statement.

For us to understand it, we need to start by defining what a salesperson’s job is.

The job of a salesperson is not to manipulate, persuade, or induce anyone to do anything that they do not want. The job of a salesperson is to help the customer make a decision in their best interest that they would not have made if the salesperson was not present.

We do that job  by helping buyers accomplish their objectives because they often don’t know how to do that themselves. For example, in most cases buyers shop for features when they really need benefits, and as salespeople we should have greater product knowledge that enables us to help them receive the desired benefits , especially when they are mistaken in the feature set they chose.

We do that job by assisting them in understanding financing and negotiations, often by making them more comfortable with the costs involved, the amount they need to spend to achieve their objectives, and by explaining to them how others have coped with the challenges they face.

We do that job by helping them to move outside the box they created for themselves when they were thinking about buying a home with little or no real information about how the process works. We help them to see alternatives and options that they wouldn’t think about for themselves. We even help them face the uncomfortable truths that they need to face to make the best choices possible. While we don’t need to be pushy or aggressive, sometimes we do need to be assertive to help people make the best possible decisions.

We do that job by helping them to negotiate better when they finally find a home, helping them to understand how to reach their objectives, by providing objective advice when they are emotionally involved in the transaction. And when the over react, or under react, we are there to help them through the process, and to do what is in their best interest. The simple fact is that people who buy residential re-sales are working with a finite number of properties for sale, and an existing inventory of properties, which may not contain the house the built for themselves in their minds at the price they decided would be the right price for them to pay.

People don’t,  by themselves, always do what is in their best interests. If they did, no one would eat too much , exercise too little, drink to excess or abuse the environment, Coaches wouldn’t exist, and no one would ever need to write or read a self-help book. Left to our own devices we often make choices that seem to be good, but are actually not. Sometimes people make choices because they’re easy, or popular, or because they fit some preconception we have. Home buyers are no different. They need the services a good salesperson provides to help them make the best choice for their needs, which may not be the choice they would make by themselves.

Simply put, we do sell houses, they don’t sell themselves. Ever. And our buyers are far better off because we do.

Think I’m wrong or think I’m right? I would love to hear from you.