Rhonda Duffy
The Real Estate Powerhouse &
Expert Consumer Advocate
How to Put Cash In Your Pocket Everyday
When You Are
a Real Estate Agent
With the upside down market that the United States is experiencing, agents across the country are wondering how they are going to stay in real estate when they have no cash flow. They are still taking on listings in record numbers, but many agents are reporting that they have no income because the houses are staying on the market an overwhelming amount of time, and most are not selling under their watch leaving the agents with a lot of expense and time and no income as a result. The sellers are more anxious than ever and are becoming difficult to deal with as they expect the agent to pay more and more marketing fees and spend more time with them discussing options all in an effort to get the house sold. And, due to the amount of inventory that most agents are carrying, the agents still feel that they need their assistants, even though they can not afford for them to be on the payroll. The latest joke in the industry is that you want to be the first born, second wife and the third real estate agent.
So, what is an agent to do? How do you turn a dismal market into something that produces revenue when your whole income is dependent on happenings that you can not control? Real estate is a game of risk; chance and what some agents call luck.
But is it really luck, risk and chance? Does it have to be all of the things that keep a real estate agent out of control of their own income and destiny? Other businesses don’t operate that way, why does a real estate agent have to have a lack of common sense which is the same common sense that runs other businesses in the U.S. today?
The only way that a common sense angle could be put on real estate is to shift the responsibility of the sale to the homeowner and for the real estate professional to assume only the responsibility of marketing the home in places that they have access to as brokers or that they get a discount in when they advertise in bulk. Many MLS sponsored sites and real estate magazines require an agent to be the advertising party. But with that being said, advertising firms don’t get paid on contingent behavior, they take a retainer or money due upon advertising as they know that their responsibility lies in delivering the product, not making the product better than it is.
In my opinion and the opinion of the clients that I have served for the last five years, which are homeowners all with a need or desire to sell their home, they tell me that they want the expertise of a seasoned agent who knows the avenues to list a home in, how to advertise the home so that every buyer in the marketplace has the opportunity to see it and an agent who is skilled in contract negotiation. However, they don’t want to overpay for a strategy that hurts them in the transaction of selling the home when the end result does happen; they sell the home.
In an attempt to turn the real estate legacy around, we should take a serious look at other businesses and determine that our efforts should be based on a reasonable fee wherein we are paid a fee upfront for our time and behavior that leads to a successful transaction between a buyer and a seller instead of gouging a few people to make up for all the ones that did not get to a successful transaction.
By charging people for our time upfront, we will create a positive cash flow and a respectable industry wherein we can relate to our client’s needs instead of a reactionary plow to keep a listing or force a transaction between two unwilling parties. The future is ours to change in real estate, we as real estate agents should see to the change.