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Problem is our association from the top down is run by people who are not in the business. They have job security as long as they "grow" the organization. It's not about quality, just quantity.
We need to have a minimum set of standards to be able to obtain a license. The COE is cool, but just doesn't cut it. Continuing Ed is a joke. We need serious benchmarks for education, understanding and competence.
On top of that we need to be evaluated. Ha! There I said it. Evaluation standards would raise the bar. We all would have to be accountable, in a transparent way.
Let's make it harder, so we too can have a little respect.
kk
Blogs like this, events like Inman, and Rebar camps go a long way to help change the perception, however, there is still the "something else" out there that hurts us all on a daily basis. Six photos people... can we start there?
As to the entry "barrier" , it is much harder (by hundreds of hours) to get a hairdresser license than a real estate license in Tennessee.
Thank goodness for the conferences and forward thinking folks in our business. Its those folks, paired with the transparency of Web 2.0 that will make old school real estate practices obsolete.
@Heather - you hit on one of my pet peeves -- photos, or lack thereof. I simply do not get it.
@Peter - slipping that link in was really rather spammy. I removed it as it violates our no advertising policy.
@Joe - you don't even want to get me started on "it's a great time to buy".... ;)
But Jay, I don't think it's a low barrier to entry - honestly. I mean, we all have the same barrier to entry, so why are some considered a professional and others a snake? IMO it's because of the consistency with which we conduct our business - good or bad, our individual actions on a daily basis determine how we our viewed as an industry.
It really does boil down to our individual actions and the way we conduct ourselves. I think you can also throw brokers into the mix. Far too many brokers out there will bring someone into their brokerage that meet two simple qualifications: 1) they have a license; and 2) they have a pulse.
If more brokers would screen more stringently and hire agents like their business success depended on it, then the lousy agents would get weeded out. The typical brokerage model of "bring in as many as you can and hope they make a sale" is broken.
I feel a blog post coming on....
However, I think our behavior as an industry is also to blame. Too many of us are perceived as "salespeople" over "advisors" which lends to our bad reputation. No one wants to be sold anything.
@mattdollinger wrote an excellent post which I expanded on recently. More being an advisor and less being a salesperson will bring up our ratings to the general public - and improve the industry overall.
http://www.sandiegolifestyle.info/2009/08/real-...
Any thoughts?
NAR's been talking abut raising the bar for a while now ... getting anything through their system/bureaucracy is tedious and requires persistence and tenacity - tenacity that lends itself to complacency and never accomplishing anything of consequence. *
The only way anything is going to change is for brokers not to bring on crappy, do-nothing agents.
* I'm going to Chicago next month for just such a meeting. :)
One thing that does have me happy is the fact that we've lost over 500 agents in our area during the market shift. We ain't that big down here in East Gawgah anyway - so this loss means market share for those of us who do attempt to protect our reputation.
Two years ago - the GREC and GAR tried to increase the amount of CE credit required, and to improve and extend both the pre and post licensing courses. Got shot down - God forbid we'd make it HARDER to get a real estate license....
Navy Chief, Navy Pride
OK so minor point, because I agree with just about everything you say. I personally do not mind agents typically suck. For us who try to go above and beyond for service it makes us look even that much better. 10% of agents in this business will always do 80% or more of the volume. Aim for the top, there is more room there.
Maybe I'm just jealous that I can't rigidly schedule my day so that I know to the minute when I'll be able to check email. On second thought, I'm glad my schedule isn't that fixed. I check email basically continuously, unless I'm actively with a client. Seems to me the best way to provide customer service. That auto-response implies that if the agent gets an email at 3:01pm, it would not be responded to until the next day.
On the other hand, it's far better than an agent I talked once that said, "I try to check my email every week".
-Tyler
For ages, the for-sale-by-owners (now we call them "unrepresented sellers" heh, heh) have hovered around 15% of the market. Surveys conducted by NAR consistently show that over 80% of recent home buyers and sellers survey would "probably" or "definitely" use the same agent.
I don't have my head in the sand... I hear the crazy stories, too; even if I can't define what it should be, I know there needs to be some fundamental change in the business. However, I'm just pointing out there is a disconnect between concern over a prestige rating and the public's appreciation of the role of the real estate agent in the transaction process. That's all I'm saying.
Ron LaMee
As people cancel their land lines, or resist calls from survey companies (privacy issues), I question as to how much of a cross-section of the Nation these survey companies really obtain. How many of us have clients that are likely to be sitting at home willing to answer these questions? How many of our clients still have land lines or answer them if they do? I personally don't put much stock in these phone surveys anymore because technology habits of the population has simply changed too much over the years.
As someone noted above, having the Congress, bankers and stockbrokers show up with such positive results really makes the survey questionable given the current mood of the country.
Survey sample sizes are weird. Through the magic of statistics, surveyors can poll 300 people and figure out who's going to be elected. Sometimes. And sometimes not.
Given the numbers, I can bet they didn't survey any of our clients! ;)
I wouldn't call the results for bankers and stockbrokers positive. But given the record of Congress for the past dozen (or more) years, that they rank at all brings the whole survey into question!
I think you're right (in part). There is a common perception that real estate agents make a lot of money. But the fact is, the vast majority of agents make very little. I don't recall the exact statistic, but the average annual income of an agent is something like $12,000. That's well below poverty level.
None the less, the perception that we're all loaded is out there. So I think you're right that this is a factor (though agents have generally been thought pretty poorly of by many for years prior to the run up).
For what it's worth, I've told many clients that they shouldn't buy or sell. And I wrote back in in 2005 that appreciation rates were not sustainable: http://www.phoenixrealestateguy.com/the-real-es... but again, I know there are agents out there preaching the "Now is a great time to buy!" mantra. And it may be -- for some. But clearly not for everyone.
Thanks for the great input Ken!
I'm reminded of him when I read this interesting post and comment chain because I can't help but think: "Who really cares how agents -- or any profession -- ranks?"
I'm a Nordstrom-service type agent, not a volume agent. I have 4 listings right now and 3 are pending. I focus my marketing on educating my sphere, and my "leads" are 98% referral-generated. It's an approach that led to ranking #1 agent in my office last year amongst 60+ agents, (and no, I don't have the plaque hanging on the wall) with this year shaping up about the same. I don't have competitors, as far as I'm concerned, other than the obstacles that stand between this moment and my clients' goals.
And I couldn't care for two seconds what John Q. thinks of my profession as a whole. I'm too busy serving my world class clients.
and in a related story: "NAR Says 124% of Americans hold Its Members in 'Very Great Prestige'"
Well, maybe.
With the exception of the 1% of the agents out there who 'get it'- the ones like you, Dean, Callie, Dru, Nick, Steve, and a hundred or so others I've met at #evfns and #rebcphx, as well as the like-minded agents all over the country, if not the world who read your informative blog, I'd add "Except for doing anything and everything to effectively market their listings online."
The other 99% of agents out there who just got into real estate to make the big money, to chase the commissions; well, you get out of it what you put in to it.
Real estate agents were portrayed back in the day as sly and misleading. I think that has changed, but the public's mental image hasn't. Real estate agents help person find the home of their dreams. I am sure that its all a matter of whom each persons has had contact with, but in general I think would should be respected alittle more.
LOL
You're right, it figures and it's sad...