This is the first post in a series of opinion blogs on how to improve our industry. First, let me state honestly that there are a lot of people out there that do not like the real estate agents. Their general complaints are
- The commissions are too high
- Prices should not be based off the percentage of the house
- Buyers’ agents should be rewarded for negotiating the property down in price, not for having the buyer pay more.
- The technologies the real estate industry uses are archaic
- It is not that complicated to sell a house.
- They will say and do anything to get the sale.
First of all, I do not agree with most of these complaints. However, the simple truth is that these are the perceptions of many potential buyers and sellers out there.
My husband, who works for a well known tech firm in the area, joined an alias of home owners recently. He sent me a number of the opinions on the alias about real estate agents and told me about others. There were more than a few opinions that strongly stated the above.
Unfortunately, perception is stronger than the truth and I feel there are some things that we can do as an industry to improve these perceptions. Many of these opinions in truth offend me, as I work very hard to earn money than most of these individuals, and yet they have the audacity to say that I am overpaid! Also, none of these individuals have ever tried to sell a house. I could of course counter that it shouldn’t be difficult to create an operating system that actually works – and therefore it is not fair that they are paid whether or not the software functions as advertised. However, as much as I scream about this it would not change the perceptions they have of us.
Fundamentally, I believe the problem is not the commission structure or what we charge as commissions but the lack of information for buyers and sellers as to what we do get paid and how we earn our commissions. I will explain this in more details over the next several posts, but I do want to stress that – in my opinion – better information showing out value is the key to improving perceptions of our field.
