Random Thoughts
I usually try to keep a consistent thought to this blog, but I don’t have one particular topic this time to fill the space so this month I will share some random thoughts in my head that I have had running around my mind for a while. Hang on for the ride of randomness!
There are times I wish I was on a reality show. The theme would be things that make me crazy or show the lack of care in the real estate world.
You would not believe some of the things we see when searching homes for buyers online. Probably the biggest are photos. I was searching a few days ago and ran across a home for 900K with 7 phots instead of the 25 allowed and all of them were taken with a cell phone and the flash. Now any of us that have taken a cell phone photo with flash, knows that the quality is not really what you would use for magazines or advertising, yet this agent felt it was the best tool for the job. Which leads me to my next thought. How do sellers really pick their agent and do they ever look to see how their home is being represented? If you have ever been on Zillow or Realtor.com, you have no doubt seen the crazy photos or lack of as well as little to no description. These are the things that make me want to print out the listing and mail it to the seller. I just shake my head and wonder if the sellers have even seen what their agent is doing with the home. Personally, if I were listing a home, the first thing I would do before even interviewing the agent, would be to view their current or past listings online. Take it a step further and google the address of one of their listings to see what the listing looks like on paid websites. I’ll tell you a secret. Almost all listings appear on Zillow and similar sites, but if you do not pay to advertise, your listing will not appear with every feature like the virtual video tour and all phots, not to mention your agents contact information. Many agents say they are on those sites, but very few are willing to pay to get proper exposure, and in fact, some take their listings OUT of them because they don’t want Zillow sending the leads to another agent. This is good for them but bad for the seller who hired them. While agent dislike many things about Zillow, they can’t deny that consumers love their site. Remember, Zillow does not sell hoes. They sell advertising to agents and those that don’t pay, don’t get proper attention which ultimately hurts the seller. Finally, I read the other day about agents using paper flyers. How many of us still get the majority of their news from the paper and who does not have a cell phone these days? The problem with flyers is that they are not trackable and often get taken by locals instead of potential buyers. Todays agent should be using a texting number that links a potential buyer to a custom website for the home and also allows the agent to follow up with the buyer. A great side feature of the texting is that unlike a flyer box, the text system is never out of flyers! I guess the one thing all of these random thoughts have in common is money. If an agent is too cheap to spend money on the basics that you can see, imagine the other items they are not paying for. It take resources to properly sell a home and unfortunately many agents don’t care or know how to do things properly to get the desired results. Is your agent doing what’s best for you or what’s best for them?