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Top Ten Reasons To Use A Real Estate Agent

In Real Estate we have our our Unbeatable 8, our Sure-Fire Best 9 and our All-Time Top Ten.

It's now time we have "The Top Ten Reasons To Use A Real Estate Agent".

When my Google Search for "The Top Ten...", provided 1,230,000 links; I decided to contribute the 1,230,001st.

I culled through my scripts (the ones I believed), my local Realtor's Association course material and the more interesting and promising Google links; and came up with my list:

1) Price (a): In NAR Surveys the number one For Sale By Owner (FSBO) concern is Determining The Selling Price. Too high, your home sits on the market, growing stale. Too low, you don't get your home's true value. Just right, you sell your home for the best price in the shortest time.

2) Price (b): Agents, having sophisticated software, access to Local Property Sale data and Special Sauce (working knowledge of the local market); generate a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) for your home.  Agents have the software and expertise to price your home, with all its features, to sell at the highest price in the shortest time. Zillow.com, RealEstateABC.com and other AVM's (Automated Valuation Models) are cheaper (free) and faster (seconds), but their data can be months old and often doesn't reflect the condition of your home or immediate market trends. Always get 3 estimates and find out why your Agent's price estimate differs.

3) Price (c): The Time Value of Money: On average the carrying cost of a home is 1% per month or 12% per year. Agents have the skills to price your home to sell at the highest price in the shortest time. Can you afford to wait for 1% per month?

4) Marketing (a): Agents have access to the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) which sends out all current listings to all the trained and State licensed Real Estate professionals in the MLS (In Rochester, NY, 3,000 Realtors).  Their business is to sell your home. In most places it is hard or expensive fora non-agent to access the MLS. (In Rochester, "MLS Only" Services charge between $295 and $995, but I'm sure you could pay more.)

5) Marketing (b): Agent-To-Agent Network. Since almost 90% of home sales are handled by Agents, Agents have the most qualified leads of buyers for your home. An Agent can email the top 25-50 agents in your area, who undoubtedly have the best qualified buyer leads.

6) Marketing (c): Agents know the best places to Advertise. With over 75% of home buyers starting their search for a home on the Internet (and almost 100% using the Internet at some time in their home search), do you plan to effectively advertise your home on the Internet and push it out to Google Base, Zillow.com and all the other Search Engines?  Ask your Agent how he or she plans to advertise your home: with the lawn sign, in print, with flyers and on the Internet. Will your home only be on the local MLS, Realtor.com, and the company Website?  Or will your home be on those sites and GoogleBase, Zillow.com and all the other major Search Engines?

7) Staging: In NAR surveys the number 2 home seller concern is correctly Staging their home for sale. Agents can give general advice, there are TV shows about staging and there are Professional Stagers.  Agents I know won't put your house on the market unless it is properly staged.

8) Non-Agent Network: Selling a house can involve a lot of people, many who aren't Real Estate Agents, your Agent's Non-Agent Network: Lenders, Lawyers, Inspectors, Insurers, Contractors, Movers, Landscapers, etc.  Your Agent has a working knowledge of all the potential players in your home sale and has a vested interest in the success of your sale.

9) Negotiation: Your Agent sells houses full time. You sell houses part time. Your Agent sells homes for a living.  He is a Professional Negotiator. He is the best one, to get you the best price, in the best time.

10) Barbers, Bar Tenders and Real Estate Agents: Finally, your home sale can be a very personal and emotional experience.  An Agent can act as a Emotional Buffer, letting you know what to expect and helping you deal with all the frustrating details. If your Agent doesn't listen, then listen to someone else. "It was just meant to be." "It just wasn't meant to be."...

• What you don't spend on your Agent, you may spend on your lawyer; and at a different hourly rate.
• Your Agent doesn't get paid until you get paid.
• Your Agent only gets more if you get more.
• It's in your Agent's best interest to get you the highest price, as quickly as possible.
• Agents shield you from unqualified buyers.

Any thoughts, comments or emails?

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

Apples And Oranges, The NAR And The Zillow, Whose Business Model Will Win?

• Free stuff for home buyers.
• Free Stuff for home sellers.
• Free stuff for home owners.
• Free stuff for Brokers and Agents.

The NAR? The MLS's? The Realtor.com? The Google? The Donald? No!

The Zillow!

Why are you so good to us?

A belated Happy Birthday to "The Zillow", "The Little RE Search Engine That Could."

I tried to post, comment, email or trackback on the NAR's Website, Blog, Carnival of Real Estate, Wiki, and President's blog; but I couldn't find them. So there are things that are "Conspicuous by their absence."

In recent readings and seminars for my business plan (What? A Real Estate Agent with a Business Plan?); I came upon a book about innovation and business models. Open Innovation, speaks of the critical need for a business model (way to make money), to go with any innovation:

• Google was loosing $50,000/month before it experimented with Overture's keyword-relevant ad sale concept. The rest is history.
• Xerox couldn't sell its copiers to customers or its technology to Kodak, GE or IBM. So it leased its expensive copiers, and did all but print money. And the rest was history.
• Auctions? Auctions on the Internet? Auctions on ebay!
• Book stores? Books for sale on the Internet? Books for sale on Amazon!

When you look at the NAR, the MLS's, and Realtor.com their business model is, "All about the house"; "Location, Location, Location"; and "Build it, hide it , they will have to come".

These theories have worked well in "The Days of the Giants" and the "CONFIDENTIAL" stamped listing books. They haven't even work so badly since 1996, when Netscape filed its IPO, and commercialized and democratized the Internet.

Today, when over 75% of home buyers start their search on the Internet and almost 100% of home buyers use the Internet at sometime in their search, can we agents wait for our slow charging, high charging Brokers, Associations and MLS's to give us Real Estate Search like the Google-Like Search we have come to know, love and expect?

Can you believe the NAR is fighting the FTC and the DOJ to keep and protect last century's business model? Will Google and Zillow play Henry Ford to the protectionist ideas of our Buggy-Whip- Manufacturers NAR?

A friend, the Webmaster for the largest RE Broker in Rochester, NY in 1997, told me their chairman said, "No one will want to search for a home on the Internet". It reminded me of the quote from the Commissioner of the US Patent Office in the 1899, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Big Real Estate, the NAR, the MLS's, Move Inc and Realtor.com have a successful business model for the 20th Century. Real Estate 1.0 was very successful for Big Real Estate. But Google, born in the late nineties is the poster child for Web 2.0.

Open information, free content and sell ads are the models for Web 2.0. Will Real Estate 2.0 be any different? Will the same forces that transformed the Web 1.0 to 2.0; not transform Real Estate 1.0?

Why hasn't Google embraced Real Estate like it has embraced keyword-relevant search, Internet maps and even Internet Video? Google is trying to get Local Search right. And what's more local; and potentially more local keyword-relevant ad friendly than Real Estate?

The NAR, MLS's and Realtor.com will never give us the Google-Like Search we need and our customers expect in the 21st Century, Web 2.0 and Real  Estate 2.0; until our leaders embrace the business model of the 21st Century.

News Release:

The NAR, the MLS's and Realtor.com open up their data to all Search Engines?

The Rest Is History!

Adapt Or Die!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

Leadership vs Followship, Real Estate 2.0 vs Real Estate 1.0 and Zillow vs NAR

Like it or not; we're deep into Web 2.0 and Real Estate 2.0. The Internet went public in 1996, and 10 years later 80% of home buyers start their home search on the Internet.

What's an Agent to do?  Where are we?  Where are you?

For the 5 years preceding 2006, Real Estate rode the wave, of the low interest rates to lift the economy after 9/11, to all time highs in home sales and home prices.  When you're fat and happy, who wants to change?

But, who will provide leadership into Real Estate 2.0?  And who will provide followship?  Who are the "Deciders"?  And who are the "Decidees"?  Can we trust our future to the Real Estate 1.0 mentality of NAR, Move Inc and Realtor.com?

With everything Real Estate 2.0; the NAR, Move Inc an Realtor.com seem to be "A day late and a dollar short."  What's worse is, they're our days and our dollars.  Can we wait for our leaders to lead?

Can the business model playbook of Real Estate 1.0:

Build Websites > Charge Agents > Hide data > Hope/Pray for leads;

ever compete with the Google, Zillow and other Web 2.0 business model playbooks:

Free Content > Drive Traffic > Sell Ads?

Can the "hidden-data/ Invisible Web" beliefs, philosophy and playbook of Real Estate 1.0 coexist with Google's stated vision for Web 2.0 to: "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"?

Before its first Birthday, Zillow, without getting a commission for selling one house; provided free home estimates for over 60 million houses, in seconds; started the most successful Real Estate Blog, started the Carnival of Real Estate, started a free MLS and Zillow is consistently one of the top 5 Real Estate Websites on the Internet.

In the meantime Real Estate was trying to clean up its act with the DOJ, FTC, Cendant and Homestore. Hopefully we're behind our Real Estate 1.0 problems delaying our entry into Real Estate 2.0.

Can we believe the sales scripts of NAR, Move Inc and Realtor.com?  How will they spin fraud, larceny and procrastination?  When Google, Zillow and the other Search Engines are giving us access, tools and advertising for free.

If we are just data and tech, we are a commodity.  And dis intermediation (dump the middle man) is around the next corner.  We need to keep adding our value, beyond our data. We need to keep working on the recipe for our secret sauce.

We need to be leaders or get leaders. We can't play "Follow-The-Leader" with our leaders any more.

GOT NEXT!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing

WWGD? What Would Google Do?

Some teenagers still wear bracelets with the letters, "WWJD?". "What Would Jesus Do?" 

In our born again Real Estate world of Web 2.0, our Agent bracelets should read: "WWGD?". "What Would Google Do?"

In an off-blog exchange with a Move Inc/Realtor.com employee, he told me: "Move Inc and Realtor.com are "Getting It"; with blogs, with Real Estate 2.0, and with the Internet.  Finally!  Or Finally?

An NAR blog? An NAR President's blog?  A Move Inc blog?  A Realtor.com blog?  What Feedback?

Comments, and Track Backs and Emails!  Oh My!

I'm still waiting for the: "Who?, What?, Where?, When?, And How? And How Much? And How!"

Is it enough for the NAR, Move Inc (formerly the multi indicted HomeStore.com) and Realtor.com to just "Get It"? 

The only "Get It" they seem to "Get" is our dues.

They have what it takes; to take what we have.

Have NAR, Move Inc and Realtor.com ever met a service (offered by Google, Zillow and the other Search Engines for free) they didn't charge us for?

Is it enough for our leaders to follow?  Aren't they supposed to lead?  Do they get paid the "big buck" just to follow?  When will they charge us the big buck for the services Zillow gives us for free? 

Where's the NAR's blog?  Where's the NAR's Real Estate Blog Galaxy?  Where's the NAR's Carnival of Real Estate?  Where's the NAR's Real Estate Wiki?  Is the NAR less interested in the our Wiki, than our Wiki-Wacky-Woo?

Zillow will never be "Big Real Estate" unless we abdicate our leadership role and let these outsiders dictate our fate.  Great nations and great organizations don't fall from without.  They fall from within.

For now, Zillow just wants to be the Commoditizer-In-Chief of public tax data.  They've taken pages from the Google Playbook to give free content and free services, to drive traffic, then to sell ads.  Zillow's business model is that of Google and Network Media:

Free Content > Drive Traffic > Sell Ads

Zillow's makes money like Google, Selling Ads.  Not like you, Selling Houses.  The Newspaper, where you buy print ads (and maybe some online ads), could sell houses too.  Are you worried they might start selling houses?

Zillow wants to be "The Google of Real Estate", not the "REMAX of Real Estate."  There's more money, less hassles and less competition in Real Estate ads than in Real Estate sales.

For some reason Google hasn't gone after selling Real Estate Search ads (on Google Base) the same way they've gone after the keyword-relevant search ads. 

There are areas where Google has not significantly ventured > dominated:

• Social Networking (MySpace)
• Blog Search (Technorati)
• Real Estate (Zillow)
• Even in Video Search; they took a page from the Microsoft and Cisco Handbooks and bought the company (YouTube).

WWGD? 

For Agents the "Big Questions" are: "What Will", Not "What Would":

• WW-NAR-D
• WW-MLS-D
• WW-R.com-D
• WWZD

And most importantly:

WWYD?:

"What Will You Do?"

GOT NEXT!  Happy Searching.

WebHomeUSAblog; The Blog of Real Estate Search Marketing