Posted on August 9th, 2007 by Jonathan Dalton

Here’s one of the dirty little secrets of Real Estate 2.0. In many ways, we’ve done a terrible job of taking clients along for the ride.

Buyers have adapted to the changes as technology has simplified their end of the bargain. They can search for homes whenever they choose just by opening a web browser. But for most sellers, it seems real estate technology is an excuse not to work hard on a sale.

So what have we taught our clients, particularly our sellers? Consider this a Realtor’s list of sins, al chait shechatanu levanecha …

We have taught our clients that open houses matter, that open houses sell homes, when in reality 99% of all open houses are staged by agents looking either to pick up some buyers or some neighborhood listings. And we predicate this myth with “I just sold a house at an open house a couple of weeks ago.” Sure you did.

We have taught our clients that extra frills such as property books inside the home will be the deciding factor in selling a home. Property books, with a copy of the Sellers Property Disclosure Statement and information on local schools, can be invaluable. But you have to get buyers in the door first, and in focusing on the in-house extras many agents skip past how they’ll get buyers into the home in the first place.

We have taught our clients that the heavier the paper and the prettier the colors on the property flyers, the better. We know better. So do our sellers. Or at least they should, since a large percentage of sellers meeting with a listing agent will pull out a stack of flyers from other homes for sale in the neighborhood. They aren’t buying these homes. They’re just taking the flyers. Few flyers end up in the hands of buyers.

We have taught our clients that throwing money at a problem solves everything. Not a lot of traffic? Run a newspaper ad. Never mind that newspapers are dying (I’m overdue for my requiem on last week’s demise of the Arrowhead Ranch Independent, caused mostly by declining ad revenue.) Never mind that buyers are online looking for homes. Sellers want to see those classified ads.

We have taught our clients that agents are driving the buying process. We’re not. Yes, an agent will send properties to his or her buyers. But they’ll likely receive as many or more in return. Why? Because there’s little need for the middleman when it comes to searching for homes. Our role as agents has changed - finding the home is the easy part. Negotiating the contract all the way through to the closing is where our expertise comes into play.

We have taught our clients that Internet marketing is easy and inexpensive. At least, we haven’t disabused them on this notion. Given there are more than one million Realtors in this country, and a relative handful of actual players on the online stage, clearly selling real estate on the web effectively isn’t easy. But it happens every day, for those in the know.

Lastly, we have taught our clients that activity is an adequate substitute for results. At the end of the day, it’s shameful that sellers can be placated with an open house or it’s nearly as useless cousin, the agent tour. It’s ludicrous that we have convinced our homeowners that seven agents visiting your home even as they harbor the sole agenda of selling their own listing is an adequate substitute for actual marketing.

Let corporate America be masters of the domain of busy work in lieu of results. There’s no place for that in real estate.

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Categories: General Real Estate, Marketing