Real Estate Listing – What NOT to do !!!

Tonight I had a great dinner with a fired up, intelligent young man and his lovely partner (I won’t name him as I’m about to talk in a somewhat negative manner about his former employer and I don’t really want to be sued, haha).

He has just left his real estate salesperson’s job, and for reasons as I’m about outline.

When listing a property, they don’t do a presentation and in fact they don’t even talk price. In fact, if the owner requests advice about what price to list the property for, their procedure is to form a circle consisting of 3 salespeople and the Principle Licensee around the seller and badger him, sometimes for up to half an hour to an hour, until the seller gives them a price to list it for, and that is the end of the discussion, even if the price the seller ‘guesses’ is too high or too low. If it’s too low, obviously the agency gets a quick sale (and broke about 983261298762198376 sections of the Code of Conduct.

If the price the seller gives is too high and unattainable, the agency simply takes their advertising money, runs the ads and the file gets put in the ‘too hard basket’ and promptly forgotten as sson as the seller’s money for advertiosing is spent.

No wonder some agents have a bad reputation and in this case, the reputation as crooks is rightly deserved.

My friend was absolutely right to leave this agency, and the head office of this brand should take steps to ensure that practice like this doesn’t happen under their banner, but that’s not for me to judge. I trust that as my friend starts his own agency, that it will be very very easy for him to outperform a skilless agency like the abovementioned, grab a market share that is deserved by someone who is truly skilled, well trained and looking out for the best interests of his sellers.

 I wish him all the best but he hardly needs it given what his competition is. It’s like the story of the two guys on safari in Africa who see a hungry lion with a glint in his eyes. One guy starts taking his shoes off to try and get away, and his friends says ‘Shoes on, shoes off, you’re never going to outrun that lion.’ To which the other replies….

‘ I DON’T HAVE TO, I JUST HAVE TO OUTRUN YOU !!!’

It’ll be pretty easy to outrun the ‘Circle of Idiocy’ that you told me about.

Have fun and work hard,

 Glenn Twiddle