Take a ride with me to the days before the silicon chip took over how our modern world looks.It is the time before computers or the internet. Where agents manually scanned lists to see what was on the market for sale. It’s important to have a big office handle your transaction. A big office means a big broker’s open, with lots of people finding out about your home. A big office means lots of agents who are telling all their clients about your home, and all the agents they come in contact about your home. A big office means huge ads in many of the local periodicals, billboards, and on television, touting the merits of your home, of their service, and of everything that you need to successfully market your home.
It also means 15% interest rates, so we’re not going to stay here any longer than we have to, I assure you. Aside from impossibly expensive-to-borrow money, the past really doesn’t offer much of a solution to the problem of finding a real estate brokerage today. Whereas then, you probably wanted to have a large office to help you find a home, or to help you effectively market a home, today, much of that is now superfluous. When a home is properly multiple listed, and when that information is shared across many different databases, sites, and personal agent pages, the effectiveness of having the big office supporting the listing is lost.
Why the big office then? What they did for you in the past has been outmoded by technology, and what they might do in the future probably isn’t as effective as that which a smaller office can do for you now. As you read this, you were probably already convinced that using a Realtor was the way to go. What you probably hadn’t considered is that what you ought to do is find a small brokerage, and enlist them to help you with your real estate objectives.
“Really?” you might say. “That’s counter intuitive. I’d want to go with an agent from a big office, with a lot of agents. They have more technology, more support, more know how…right?”
Well, they might. They might have a hundred agents. They might have 50 computers. They might have thousands of past, and dozens of present clients. They might spend hundreds of dollars on advertising and have their own spectacular website. These are all things that are useful, and all things that are helpful, when they’re used, and help. But they also create an illusion. The illusion is that ‘All of this is here to benefit you.’ Simply, it’s not. Here’s why.
What is a real estate office selling? They don’t sell computers, blogs, websites, open houses, hot air balloons, fancy colored jackets…they don’t sell any of that. A real estate office’s product is the agents and the service they provide.
Most of the agents at big companies that are in the top ten percent are the heads of large teams now. They have a group of licensed agents that work for them. They’re practically a company within the company. They have snazzy computer programs and websites to help market your home. The parent company spends millions of dollars promoting the brand. They still advertise their properties in periodicals. None of this is new.
So when you walked into Realty Company X to work with Bob, because he’s a great agent (all the papers and statistics and referral say so), and meet Bob for a split second before you’re assigned Tim, who is two months on the job, to present a PowerPoint presentation on Bob, Realty X, and how they can help you sell your home… Did you get what you bargained for? A real estate office’s product is its agents the service they provide. You got Tim, you wanted Bob. How does that make you feel? Even if you get Bob, how many times out of ten do you think his assistant will return your calls? Are you ok with that?
Assuming apples and apples, using a small firm or a solo broker makes a great deal of sense. It creates accountability. There’s transparency. There’s nothing to hide behind. There is no blame to be shouldered, should something not go according to plan, by anyone other than that agent himself. When you pick up the phone, and call your agent, your agent answers, or it is your agent that returns the call. There is no agent bait and switch. You’ve got the person you ordered, on call, 24/7.
Small agent offices tend to really know their territories and their clients. A smaller office creates more individualized attention. Why people assume that someone doing a HUGE volume of business will be able to provide more individual attention or personalized service really does escape me. Would you rather, for example, sit in the restaurant section where the waitperson is waiting on 4 tables, or 8? What would you pick, if you were picking, when picking out that table? It isn’t necessary in a transaction to speak to one’s agent every day. But when it is, wouldn’t you like to be able to know you can find them? Might it not be nice if they were calling you anyway as part of their regular check in policy. Isn’t it even nicer still if you saw the same face every time you sat down with your agent, instead of a rotation of whomever on the team is available when you get there?
But what about the massive websites and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on print advertising? Don’t you need all of that, in today’s market, to help you sell your home? Not really! Your home, if Multiple Listed, is already being viewed by every Realtor in the market as well as almost 60% of people looking on their own. Your listing is also being shown on other auxiliary sites automatically because your home is multiple listed.
But very best of all, the small office agent is their own product. They are separate from a brand. I, as a solo agent/broker, can look confidently at my client, and tell them why I am the best person for the job. Not my hot air balloon. Not my pretty colored jacket. I am. You, my client, will always speak to me when you’re looking for me, and won’t ever get called back from someone from my office that you’ve never spoken to. You will never call me and wonder if I actually remember who you are and remember your property. I never have to worry about meeting with a client that has heard bad things about another agent that works at my company/office/brand. It doesn’t happen, because I’m able to make sure that it doesn’t.
Bottom line… all the bells and whistles of a big company are just that… bells and whistles. Advertising doesn’t sell houses. Company websites don’t sell houses. Large teams don’t sell houses. People sell houses. Don’t you want the person working for you to be focused on YOU?
Doesn’t that make things easier for you? This process is complicated enough. Make sure the focus remains on you. Give the smaller companies an opportunity to show how they can do a bigger job.