As leaders, a key responsibility is to build up the belief system of our people.
In the challenging environment that our agents face every day, we add value by building their belief in real estate as a career. If our agents ever find themselves asking ‘Why am I doing this?,’ we need to be there with the answers. The good news is there are many tools that can help us do that.
The “National Association of Realtors® annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers” is one of those tools. It is full of incredibly valuable and insightful information from surveys of close to 9,000 people who recently completed a real estate transaction.
Each year, when this publication is released, we’re especially curious about two numbers—how many customers use a real estate agent (as opposed to going it on their own) and how many customers pick that agent based on a personal relationship (as opposed to picking a stranger). The numbers for 2013 are 88 percent and 64 percent respectively.
The Customer Still Finds Agents Valuable
What’s interesting, and also counterintuitive, is that those numbers have basically stayed the same and even increased slightly over the last 10 to 15 years. Even in the age of the Internet and open access to information, the customer still finds value in the real estate agent and picks an agent that they know, like and trust.
Why is this? Why do they need professionals like us? Why haven’t we gone the way of the stock broker and travel agent? There are four key reasons:
1. Complexity. The real estate transaction continues to be more and more complex. Appraisals, lending guidelines, inspections, changing values, multiple offers, title issues, etc. are all very difficult for the layperson to understand.
2. Risk. Because the real estate transaction is relatively large compared to any other transaction, the cost of a mistake can be big. A 10 percent mistake on a $300,000 home makes a significant impact.
3. Emotion. Buying or selling a home is one of the top five most emotional experiences in a person’s lifetime second only to events like having a child, getting married and losing a loved one.
4. Frequency. The latest NAR research shows that the average person buys a new home every nine years.
So, the consumer faces something called the real estate transaction that is incredibly complex, fraught with risk and highly emotional. The last time they did it was nine years ago, and the game has completely changed since then!
Be mindful and proud of the value we add. The customer needs us more than they ever have before. Remind your people that they offer meaningful and significant value!
This article appeared in REAL Trends Newsletter and is being reprinted with permission of REAL Trends, Copyright 2014.