BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might remember that I’ve talked about Southern bugs once before.  And, I imagine this time I’ll start getting hits from the search engines when people look up cockroach or water bug.  But, that’s OK.

For any of you who got here using that kind of a search, I apologize.  This is just a Whimsical Wednesday post, not an information site about insects.

There are pesky cockroaches lurking about outside here all year around, I imagine.  But, there are times when they seem more determined to join us in the house than others.  I’m not really sure what triggers it, since I’m not really a cockroach expert, but the first sign is that you’ll see a couple belly-up in the garage.  That’s the clue that the roaches are on the move indoors.

So, the other night, I was sitting quietly in the living room when in FLEW a cockroach, closely followed by my cat.   Of course, we all know the little devils can fly, but generally by the time they get in the house, they’re too groggy from the bug spray to work up much energy for it.

The only thing I can assume is that Joey found the bug shortly after it slithered through whatever crack it found to get in the house, and the bug was still pretty perky.

An insect that size in flight is an awesome sight.  Especially when it ends up landing on your living room furniture.  So, this was no time for fooling around.  I raced for the vacuum cleaner while Joey tried to find a way to leap high enough to grab the intruder.

Joey has not quite come to terms with the vacuum cleaner.  I think it’s a bit loud and obnoxious for his taste.  So, when I came tearing up, plugged in the machine and turned it on, Joey decided to retreat to a safe distance.  I sucked the cockroach up in the long extension to the vacuum, let it run long enough to convince myself that the roach had not survived, then turned the vacuum off and collapsed on the couch to try to return my breathing to a normal  pattern.

Joey is evidently not completely conversant in how vacuum cleaners deal with cockroaches.  He first went back to the last place he’d seen the bug and did a bit of reconnoitering, but was rather puzzled by the fact that the bug was nowhere to be seen.

Then, he approached the vacuum cleaner and sniffed it over thoroughly, looked from the vacuum to the last known location of the bug and back, and walked away shaking his head.

At times like that, I wish I could have the same level of enthusiasm for playing with cockroaches as cats do. . .  but it’ll never happen.

Do you have a real estate marketing tip?  Contact me about writing a guest post for this blog.  Appropriate links to your website will be included.  Impress your peers with your knowledge - you never know when a referral opportunity will arise!

Do you have a real estate marketing question?  If you send me a thoughtful question, I’ll write a blog post to respond.  Appropriate links to your website will be included.  Impress your peers with your search for knowledge - you never know when a referral opportunity will arise!

Evidently not, according to a Consumer Reports survey quoted on Inman News.

If you’re a discount broker or working in that type of a brokerage, from what I’ve seen, you’ve taken a step toward a Real Estate Consulting model.  The objective is to provide a lower fee, but most of those brokerages I’ve seen have a “project description” that identifies what services will and will not be provided.

Full-Service Agents Just Seem to Provide Full-Service

I think it becomes a problem when full-service agents reduce their fee because the seller negotiated.  Full-service agents often don’t have a list of services - they just do what’s necessary.  And, according to the Consumer Reports survey, they perform the same services, regardless of the fee.

For example, the survey discovered that 46% of sellers attempted to negotiate a lower commission, and of those, about 71% were successful!

OK, so an agent decided to reduce their fee.  But, did they reduce their service level?  Evidently not.  The overall conclusion Inman News came to from reviewing the survey was that the amount of the fee didn’t affect the quality of the service.

Don’t you think that’s a bit crazy?

Real Estate Consulting Rocks!

The typical arguments I’ve seen about not reducing fees use examples like lawyers.  If a lawyer makes $350 an hour, do you think they’re going to lower that fee because you ask?  I can understand that it might be a bad example to use.  REALTORS® might not really identify with being on a par with lawyers.  But, what about consultants?

The consulting industry has been writing project descriptions forever.  A consultant’s knee-jerk reaction to a discussion of reducing fees is to find a way to meet the client’s objective while eliminating some of the steps in the process.  It would never enter a consultant’s head to reduce the fee and provide the same level of service.

I think the issue gets back to how you value your skills.  I know there are a lot of ditzy real estate agents in the world; I know that there are a lot of agents who just work part-time; there are agents who got their license because they were bored and wanted to get the commission when they sold their house.

But, there are also very talented, personable, knowledgeable, seasoned professional REALTORS® who really care about their clients, who work very hard, and who have saved more than one client’s behind on a deal.  Why would that person want to lower their fees?

Start by Documenting The Effort Expended

Maybe a place to start is by figuring out how many hours you spend on various transactions.  Do you have that information?  Not just a guess, but an actual accumulation of hours spent?  If so, bravo! 

If not, start jotting down the hours you spend in all the various aspects of helping a client buy or sell a home.  Once you start getting a feel for the effort involved, you’ll be able to appreciate the effort and expertise you bring to the table.

That might just start you on your way to moving toward a real estate consulting business model…

Thanks to Bill Gassett, who consults on Hopkinton MA real estate, I found some good ideas for increasing your exposure in your local market and getting quality incoming links to your blog.

Check out the site www.YourStreet.com.  Once you join, you will be able to:  “post articles, voice your opinion, join a discussion forum, and display your user profile” according to the website.

Bill has found the site helpful because he can send his blog posts to YourStreet and they are posted on the the site’s community page for his market area.   I’m not sure how much juice the incoming links have because there are so many pages on the site, but I think it’s a great opportunity to check out.

YourStreet will also syndicate your blog if they think the content is appropriate.  That will eliminate the need to manually add the post to the site.  Just use one of the feedback forms to request syndiating your blog.

The other site Bill mentioned is www.Topix.com.  Bill says that articles are cached pretty quickly on this site by Google, and Yahoo is showing some of Bill’s articles on Topix as incoming links.

Make the most of your blogging effort - get the word out electronically!

I hope you’ve never been a defendant or plaintiff in a courtroom because that would mean that there was some trouble in your life.  But, if you have had that experience, you may know how stupidity in the court happens.

I’ve been on one jury - no stupidity, just a civil suit that only took a day.  And, the verdict was very obvious to all.  The scary thing was a couple of the jurors were older women, and they evidently sit on juries as a hobbie.  They wanted everyone’s name because they kept a scrapbook on all their juries.  Hmmm….

I saw this in a magazine (from JCR, the magazine of the National Court Reporters Association) the other day and it reminded me of courtroom silliness:

Lawyer:  Do you know when that meeting occurred?
Witness:  The March 9 meeting?
Lawyer:  Yes
Witness:  March 9

I think things like that happen when the attorney isn’t very prepared for a particular witness.  I think it’s the same reason that people say “Ummm” before answering a question, because they’re giving themselves time to think. 

And, evidently while they’re thinking of the next juicy question to ask, their ability to recognize what they’re currently saying is significantly reduced.

I was a witness in a trial once.  It was a ridiculous civil suit that should never have gotten into a courtroom.  But, it did, and after being warned by the defendant’s attorney that it would happen, I was served a subpoena - more than once, actually, because the trial date got moved around.

Unless you try to hide from process servers, you’ll find them rather nice and actually apologetic.  Explaining that I was expecting the subpoena didn’t seem to make them feel any better.

Here was my stupid question.  The attorney seemed to be very busy looking at some papers he was holding.  I had just explained that I heard a fight, went outside to see what was happening, then went back inside to call the police.  And, the lawyer asked:

“And, how long were you there?”

And, I said, “Ummm, well, I guess until I left”.

Then, the attorney asked, “Oh, so you didn’t go back outside?”  Which I think would have been the appropriate question in the first place.

Don’t you?

If you’ve been in real estate for a while, you’re undoubtedly aware of the problems there can be when you’re trying to manage a contact database.

Depending on your technology setup, you could have contact information spread out over numerous databases:

1. The database for your website
2. The database for your IDX MLS provider
3. The database for your contact manager

It’s a difficult situation.  I really wish industry providers would get together and come up with standards that would make consolidating information much easier.  After all, look at the Internet!  Lots of people had to agree on lots of issues to make it work. 

The problem is made even worse by the fact that, in my humble opinion anyway, no one vendor has put it all together yet.  Some IDX MLS vendors offer websites, but they aren’t the best.  Some website vendors offer contact databases, but they aren’t the best either, and the list goes on.

So, looks like we’ll just have to put up with the problem of where to store the contact information that should really be centralized to be effective.

One thing I was very happy to see is that Top Produceer has removed the “frame busters” from their forms in Top Producer 8i.  So, if you are a Top Producer user, you can now frame forms into your website.

No consolidation required - anyone who completes a form on your website will go directly into your Top Producer database.

I’m so excited.

The Answer Is: No.

Just because you are establishing a consulting business model, you’re not necessarily reducing your fees.  You are letting your clients have choices about the level of support you provide.  And, I think it would be important to make that distinction clear to your clients.

As Jack Harper said in the Real Town Real Estate Consulting Group, “we have a pricing schedule that sets hourly and bundled prices such that when the client decides to add a majority of them all up it would total just below full-rate traditional commissions. The reason is that they are paying up front. Since the risk to our income is reduced, we can afford to lower the fees.”

Have you ever thought about all the things that have to be done when you’re acting as a listing agent?  If not, take a look at this list compiled by the Orlando Regional REALTOR® Association.  There are 180 tasks.  Not all of them need to be done for every transaction, and depending on the situation, some of the tasks may take a few minutes or a few days.

Now, as you look over that list, think about the potential for breaking the tasks up into “bundles”.  Can you see the possibilities?

The Olympics are back again.  I watched most of the Opening Ceremony.  It was an amazing thing.  The drummers, for example.  How you can get all those people to do the same thing at EXACTLY the same time is mind boggling.

I gave up watching after some of the teams entered the venue.  As usual, I was amazed by all the countries I’ve never heard of.  But, then, I was curious about the lighting of the torch.  I’m a night owl, so I tuned in toward the end of the broadcast and had a chance to see the torch ceremony.

I’m not a big sports fan, but there is something about the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics that touches me.  It’s more about so much of the world coming together - if only we could truly understand each other and quit fighting, that would be my dream, Olympic or otherwise.

So, the lighting of the torch is always a touching scene for me.  If you didn’t get a chance to see it, here’s how it went.  There were 8 torch bearers.  The last one was a famous Chinese athlete.  After lighting his torch, he was elevated on some kind of a wire to the height of the “membrane” at the very top of the stadium, and if you saw any of the Ceremony, you heard about that.

Once he reached the top, the wire changed the angle at which he was suspended, and he “ran” all the way around the stadium.  As he passed by, photos of the travels of the torch from Greece were projected on the membrane.

How he had the strength to “run” in place while hanging on a wire is beyond me.  It was quite something.  Then, the torch had appeared as if by magic at the top of the stadium, and the lighting of the flame gave me a familiar lump in my throat.

And, the men’s gymnastic team got a Bronze medal!  How cool.

And, Sarah Brightman was there.  I am in awe of her voice, but I can’t help thinking that she always looks like she’s high on drugs.

One of the people I watched the early part of the Ceremony with (who will remain nameless) complained, “I can’t understand a word she’s saying!”

Guess that’s what happens when Sarah sings in Chinese…   

I’ve talked before about the fact that I think agents and brokers are running real estate consulting service firms.  Today, I saw a couple interesting posts on RealTalk about changing how real estate professionals charge for their services.

Have you thought about it?  Do you think it’s possible?  Do you think it’s necessary?

The posts were made in a RealTalk Group called “Real Estate Consulting” by Jack Harper.  Jack has been a licensed REALTOR® since 1983, and is a broker in California.  Jack says that he is an

• avid proponent of radical change in how we in the real estate industry need to restructure our business models - away from transaction-dependent contingent commissions and toward service models that are more client-centric and allow the consumer full choice when it comes to selecting the services they want us to perform on their behalf.

I think it’s a fascinating concept for real estate professionals to actually get paid for the time they spend on a client’s behalf.  Here’s how Jack explains his approach.

Having been in the consulting business for quite a few years, I understand how the consulting fee model could be applied to real estate.  I think the question is, will the industry be able to pull it off?

Jack talks about three different types of pricing models:

• Hourly Services
• Consulting Packages
• Full Service Plans that could either be traditional commission or a capped fee

Can you think of services you perform that could fit into an hourly fee structure, or ways to bundle certain services in to a package?

The first thing any consultant learns is how critical it is to manage the “scope” of the project.  That’s why it’s important to write a project description that defines exactly what tasks will be performed.  Any consultant who doesn’t learn how to manage their projects’ scope doesn’t stay in business very long!

If a proposal states that two revisions of a design are included, that gets written down and accepted by the client.  If the client wants 15 revisions, they know that some of those revisions will be outside the scope of the project.  Well, they don’t always know it — but when the fact is pointed out, they can see it’s right there in black and white.

Why should real estate consultants charge any differently?

When was the last time you really took a hard look at your listing presentation?  If it’s been a while, take the time to get it updated.  Especially in a slow market, you don’t need to spend time with listings that won’t sell or sellers that won’t listen.

Use Your Listing Presentation to Educate and Evaluate Your Prospect

Just like a job interview, a listing presentation is an opportunity for you to decide if you want to work with the seller, while the seller decides whether he/she wants to work with you.

Given the fact that you are running a real estate consulting business, we should stop thinking about these meetings as listing presentations.  Maybe we should call them Home Selling Evaluation Meetings.  The seller evaluates you and vice versa.

Elements of a Great Home Selling Evaluation Meeting

Don’t Just Talk About Technology, Demonstrate it! - You’ve got a laptop computer, right?  Put your presentation materials in PowerPoint.  And, while you have the computer handy, show off a few other things:
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