By Mike Bodeen · 11 July 2022
What’s Needed Now?
In a rising and heated sales market, almost any agent can look like a genius sales guru. You may mess up inputting your data into the MLS, you could take house photos with a 10-year-old cell phone, you could fail to follow up with phone calls to your client, fellow agents, and the buying public, and not even get a “for sale sign” on the property for 5 days, and still, you’ll be deluged with a dozen or more offers on the property, with many of them over asking price.
Agent is hero. And sadly, many of these “agents” believe their own self-imagined press releases.
It’s been a market where gimmicky sales approaches will thrive, then dive. 5 Star agent google ratings will plummet from the skyscraper to the basement – assuming they are ever shown to the public. If you thought you weren’t hearing from your agent very often before, you ain’t seen nuthin yet.
“And as a sure sign of the Apocalypse, builders are cuddling up to Realtors to get us to bring our buyers back to them.”
One advantage of having been an active and productive real estate sales professional for over 45 years is that I’ve seen it all – that is until the next thing that I’ve never seen before comes along. These days, that could be yesterday. 😉
But now the market is changing. Supply (listings) are rising quickly, (see chart below). Demand is diminishing. Pending sales, closed sales and listing prices are dropping.
We’re now seeing layoffs happening. Re/Max, one of the largest franchises in the country is laying off 17% of their support staff. The mortgage industry has now laid off hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide. Title companies are shedding thousands of jobs. And as a sure sign of the Apocalypse, builders are cuddling up to Realtors to get us to bring our buyers back to them. A good read about what that might mean for the industry here.
You may have noticed that there are more for sale signs in your neighborhood – those will increase. Agent open houses are back in fashion again, but the lookers are fewer.
We will not know how many thousands of agents will have left the industry until January when our real estate board dues come due. This is Déjà vu all over again.
Now, more than ever, reputable, well-seasoned Realtors will display their immense value as they provide honest and wise counsel along with professional sales skills that will be critical to help guide their clients in the potentially tumultuous days ahead.
Call us the anti-gimmicky.