It’s time that elite agents, their team, and leading small brokerages band together to change our industry for the better for us and our clients. Teams and large producing agents are the overwhelming minority in the current real estate world with no collective voice or recognition of our influence, but together, the top 5% of producing real estate agents, if we band together and act together, we will hold the power for positive change, not them.
We are the ones that bust our butts every day to procure listings. We are the backbone of the industry, yet, we get ignored when decision-making takes place. We spend our time and marketing dollars to sell houses, the starting point of the real estate money TRAIN. But this is where the TRAIN, the 17% of GDP real estate industry of home sales, mortgage, and title, begins. Amazingly enough, we then relinquish our influence for others to benefit, this begins and our cut is limited and we lose control. This is very evident with all of the technology companies, evident in the image, looking to get a piece of our pie, originated by us foolishly until now!
We, through this effort of listing and selling houses, in essence, create the opportunity for mortgage, escrow, and title. We create paychecks for the lead providers and software companies looking to take their piece of the TRAIN, by allowing them to market our listings through agreements made by our industry. But, due to our industry stewards, the brokers, and associations, who clearly are not the ones in the trenches, the industry leadership has been lackluster at best in looking out for our interests and we now may be on the brink of losing the dominance we once held.
We, the Top 5%, affect an overwhelming majority of the transactions (collectively we are involved in 87% of the 100,000 sales in Maricopa County, and, for this, we line the pockets of the rest of the industry, and frankly, the buck stops here. Until now, I had hoped for leadership from the brokerage level starting back in 2015, but, clearly, they have not navigated technology and are still trying to adjust their business practices to stay relevant, while the industry’s elite tech companies take charge and we are left holding the proverbial bag. We can affect change to reinvent our industry that has reaped our rewards until now but this story has recently taken a different road that puts our future in jeopardy and is taking us out of the driver’s seat. In November of 2019, I witnessed a landmark decision in our industry that rocked my world and yours and began my decision that the time is now for us to band together.
The industry (Associations and MLS) choose to make a stand leaving absent the choice for the consumer and yet it was pitched to us as “cooperation”. Well, we watch idly by as the Department of Justice clearly didn’t want to wait for real estate agents to fix their industry. We know MLS 8.0 was their only play after the last poor industry decision that gave up control of the marketplace heading into the great recession to choose not to push the existing brokers to market their listings versus sell the data, sealing our fate.
In the fall of 2019, the NAR (National Association of Realtors) Board of Directors voted for a change that made me realize that we are not in control of our industry and they are.
This troubles me and, likely, you. As now it forces all of our listings leads to BIG INTERNET LEAD PROVIDERS that send our prospects to competitors and most importantly DON’T represent the seller as we would in trying to sell the house as we were hired.
I always found it strange that those who are not dominant at selling houses become brokers and then run for the government that runs our world.
The challenge is we can typically turn a cheek, but there is a time, after getting walked over time and time again, that we must make a stand. This same real estate government structure, years ago, gave away the rights to market our listings, which resulted in the industry being led by new tech brokers that we pay to get leads from our competitor listings. We don’t work for them, but they are sucking our intelligence and using this to reinvent the real estate sales process and charging us for their education, as they walk the line of being our Frienemy.
Hopefully, over these next few articles that I’ll share with you, I can get you to see this is a bigger issue that is building and has culminated in this nonconsumer-friendly approach that hurts consumers and needs to be righted soon before we lose control. I will be sharing more of my concerns and feelings, as I want us to be on the same page so we can right this ship.
My main 3 goals are:
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- Consumers deserve a superior experience when selling their home.
- Consumers deserve elite representation.
- The industry elite should be the ones that improve the experience!
It is time the Elite agent’s band together to take control of our industry to put the focus on the consumer and raise the customer experience through higher standards and demonstrate that our industry needs us!
