If I was a Real Estate Broker…

“Investing in a buggy whip after Henry Ford created the Model T was not going to be fruitful no mater how good a buggy whip it was.”

“”I’m sure that the last buggy whip company in America made the best damn buggy whips in the world” Larry “the Liquidator” Garfield from the 1991 movie “Other People’s Money”.

It’s nearly 2008 and it’s absolutely amazing how the bulk of real estate agents and brokers conduct business in the same way and fashion as it was conducted so many years ago. Before there was an Internet, Real estate agents were the crypt keepers of the ancient binder of listings that only the privileged could ever see. That big, 3 ring binder guarded by gargoyles..the MLS book.

Control of property listings made the agent necessary and somewhat essential to home sellers and buyers. But then Al Gore went and screwed things up for them and invented the Internet and things have not been, nor ever will be the same.

Mere mortals without a real estate license embraced this new technology and became empowered consumers with access to INFORMATION!

Oh my…the masses now could see things for themselves, they could search neighborhoods, school districts, shop for mortgages, see pictures, comparables and event addresses. Instead of being walking dead the masses could now be armed with the same information that the agent had…maybe and likely more than what the agent had.

Agents it seems would be require to re-tool, go back and change the game plan, after all you could no longer be victorious if the other team had your playbook? Could you?

Well most recently with the advent of rapidly escalating appreciation in certain real estate market, a new lottery was unveiled and the gold rush was on. This gold rush, unlike that which the 49ers were forced to endure, did not require any real mining. Simply put up a stake, attach a sign and make a million became the modus operandi.

The rush was on schools filled with the millionaires to be. High School Diplomas or GED’s in hand they were knighted as being qualified..bona fide if you will…and set loose with the week’s knowledge of how to be an expectant millionaire.

The creed was simple, rehearsed and memorized. “Defend always the commission”. Like true real estate kamikaze pilots, they bombarded lowly earthlings called Sellers and invaded them with their empirical ideology that they and only they…would be able to manifest a buyer.

While of course tongue in cheek..am I far off? Of course not!

Here is an industry with which minimal training needed…riches can be obtained. In any other advertisment, commercial..etc…this would be called a scheme and would be laughed off as a scam and many would be calling for investigations.

Let’s highlight this scheme:

1. No money down needed

2. Make millions and get rich

3. No experience necessary

4. Work from Home

5. Be your own boss

6. Set your own hours

Get the picture here??? But now, the landscape is a changing really, really fast. That darn Internet! The Internet is here to stay and with it, millions of people can now have all the information at their finger tips to do everything a real estate agent can do.

Agents expecting to be successful in this business need to learn a new business model ..FAST.

1. Investment required (marketing alone should be budgeted at 10-20% of gross revenue

2. You can indeed make millions and get rich but you are going to have to work hard, continually educate yourself, and possibly avail yourself of true opportunities

3. Yes, you will need experience. There are quite a large number of successful agents out there who have adapted, and realize what it takes to run a BUSINESS.

4. While you can indeed work from home, you had better make sure that you have a virtual infrastructure in place to run your work from home empire. Here’s a hint..an autoresponder is not a technologically advanced component of a virtual infrastructure.

5. yes you can be your own boss but it may behoove you to outsource a bevy of tasks to virtual assistants, virtual pbx operators, website developer..etc…yes you will have many people working for you if you are to be successful in 2008.

6. Yes, you can set your own hours as long as someone can get a hold of somebody who knows what the gig is. Want to lose money? have someone call on a listing and have them get voicemail time after time…no one is that busy.

I often have Sellers call their own agent’s number as shown on the MLS and when they can’t get a hold of them it’s easy to blow the agent out of the water.

But…the biggest problem for agents in 2008 is the rise of virtual investing by the Real Estate investor. With so many foreclosures and motivated Sellers, investors are spending a lot of money seeking these people out. They are getting responses, they are getting the deals, they are creating auctions..they are closing!!

Investors know how to negotiate, agents don’t, have never been trained and even if they are the very nature of their contract system precludes them from negotiating with a loss mitigator. Most do not even realize they are in a negotiation.

Why would any Seller hire someone, pay them 6% of their sales price, who was not a skilled negotiator.

You see the headline of this posting? If I was a Real Estate Broker… Well if I was a real estate broker, here is the kind of DAILY morning meeting I would have with my associates.

Offensive? who cares. If they don’t like it..hit the friggin bricks. I want closers. I want people who want to make some money.

Like the story goes..on every call someone is going to get sold. My people better be prepared, educated, technologically superior and advanced negotiators otherwise they can get the f^*k out.

Sound harsh…good! Then you’re not cut out to be successful in this business and 2008 might be it for you. You’re a buggywhipper!

But hey..this is just my opinion.

Update: Real estate brokers are as much a part of the housing industry problem as the banks. They are hiring sub-par performers who are taking listings and stinking up the joint!

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