Consider the following scenario:<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome to Burger House may I take your order?\u201d Well now that\u2019s a silly scenario. Who buys a house at a fast food drive through? That\u2019s ridiculous, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n Not really, if you consider how buyers call in on properties and expect real estate agents to \u201cserve them up\u201d a house sometimes with no notice, no appointment, and very little exchange of basic information. Here\u2019s what a typical phone call is like to a real estate agent:<\/p>\n \u201cHello this is Jane. How may I help you?\u201d He\u2019s not willing to give up personal information in exchange for an appointment. But the agent has a stranger on the phone who wants to meet right now, we don\u2019t know if the person is qualified to buy – or even his last name.<\/p>\n The agent taking the call is trained to screen buyers to make sure (1) they are qualified to buy and (2) they are not working with another agent. This is standard practice in the real estate business. But the caller is having none of the vetting process – he just wants to see the house and see it immediately. See the disconnect here?<\/p>\n The next step the caller typically takes is to ask the agent, \u201cDo you want to sell the house or not? Because I want to buy this house.\u201d He hasn\u2019t seen it yet, we don\u2019t know if he can financially afford it, yet he wants the agent to jump in the car and rush over to open the door.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a scare tactic. The buyer thinks agents are so desperate to make a sale they will risk their own personal safety – and waste of time – versus not sell a house.<\/p>\n Whoa – yes I just pulled the \u201csafety\u201d card. To those who are not in this industry who may be reading this, answer this question: \u201cIf it was your wife or mother or little brother who was being asked to hop in the car, to meet a stranger at an empty house, perhaps at 10 am or 8 pm, would you be so quick to judge?\u201d<\/p>\n Because that is exactly what real estate agents are asked to do every single day.<\/p>\n Get a call, meet a stranger, maybe sell the house. Maybe we lose more than a few hours of our time. Maybe we lose our lives. I know it\u2019s a sobering thought – but in what other industry does the phone ring, and the person on the other end run to meet a stranger outside the office without screening them for the ability and motivation to buy? It happens every day in real estate.<\/p>\n You may be thinking, so meet them at the office and then take them out. Spend a week in this business and you will realize just how hard that is to implement. The house may be on the east side of town and your office is on the west side. The buyer doesn\u2019t want to drive to the office when he\u2019s already in front of the house.<\/p>\n You\u2019re already in the car when he calls and it\u2019s just a few minutes to run over to the property anyway. Who wants to inconvenience the buyer and the agent who are both on the other side of town from the office?<\/p>\n Those are not even the best arguments for not going back to the office to meet the buyer. The best arguments come from the buyers themselves, who are trained or conditioned NOT to treat real estate agents as true professionals. We\u2019re just door openers, people who get buyers access to the house.<\/em><\/p>\n Try quizzing a buyer about his wants or needs or motivations and you\u2019ll find that many buyers don\u2019t think they have to answer questions at all. They are so used to agents just making the appointment that when an agent tries to ask questions so he or she can advise and counsel that person, they resist.<\/p>\n \u201cJust get me in. I just want to see the house,\u201d is the mantra.<\/p>\n Things won\u2019t change until agents stop playing the game and won\u2019t make the appointment until meeting in person at the office, or at least answering a few basic questions. I would love to see every agent stop dropping everything to show a house to a buyer \u201cjust in town a few hours\u201d on the chance the buyer is \u201cthe one\u201d who buys the property.<\/p>\n Yes it\u2019s a gamble, but in 15 years of doing this, I find it\u2019s rarely the buyer who throws a tantrum and insists in instant access who is \u201cthe one.\u201d<\/p>\n Buyers who are serious will answer our screening questions. They understand that we are professionals who need appointments to show them houses. And they respect our time and brains in the counseling\/advising process. Those are the buyers we want to work with. Those are the buyers who deserve our time and attention. Not the buyers who pitch a fit when they call an agent\u2019s cell phone late Friday night and get no answer. Not the buyers who are sitting in front of a home and demand an agent show up within five minutes.<\/p>\n I wish every agent working with buyers would read this and agree to stop caving in to buyer demands to instant access to houses and agents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But if agents deny access, unfortunately the consumer will just pick up the phone and call the next agent on the list. And chances are that one agent on the list will be hungry enough, desperate enough, or just naive enough, to hop in the car and show the house.<\/p>\n Until we train our agents and enforce an office policy that discourages \u201cPop Tart\u201d agents, consumer behavior won\u2019t change.<\/p>\n This editorial was originally published in March of 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The real estate profession is unique in that everyone is on call, but until better practices are put into place, the profession will suffer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335861,"featured_media":1015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[254,256],"tags":[1234,110],"class_list":["post-3729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","category-real-estate-practice-editorials","tag-real-estate-news","tag-real-estate-practice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/04\/zillow-premier-agent.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3729"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13325,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions\/13325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cI\u2019d like a Big House Burger, a large sweet tea and I\u2019d like to buy 1915 Main St.\u201d
\n\u201cGreat would you like a home warranty with that?\u201d
\n\u201cNo. Just the house.\u201d
\n\u201cWill you be paying cash or getting a mortgage?\u201d
\n\u201cCash.\u201d
\n\u201cYour total is $196,521 please pull forward to window 1 to pay. Your food and keys are at window 2.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019d like to see 123 Main Street.\u201d
\n\u201cOkay great. The list price for that is $125,000. What is your name?\u201d
\n\u201cJohn. When can I see it?\u201d
\n\u201cOkay John and in case we are disconnected what is the best phone number for you?\u201d
\n\u201cI am in front of the house now I\u2019d like to see it as soon as possible.\u201d
\n\u201cWell that house is occupied and we are supposed to give the owner 24 hours notice. Can you tell me a little about what you\u2019re looking for?\u201d
\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t look occupied. I walked around the outside and I don\u2019t think anyone lives here now.\u201d
\n\u201cActually it is occupied. The owner still lives there. I need to call and request an appointment. Even if it\u2019s vacant we still do need an appointment. Have you been looking a long time or did you just start looking?\u201d
\n\u201cI have been looking a few months. When can you get here?\u201d
\n\u201cOkay I need to call to set it up. Are you working with another agent?\u201d
\n\u201cNo I just call the listing agent when I see something. I\u2019d really like to get in now. I only have an hour so can you get here quickly?\u201d
\n\u201cLet me call the seller John and get approval. I need to clear it with him first. What\u2019s your last name?\u201d
\n\u201cAre you coming now to show it to me or not? I don\u2019t have time to answer all these questions.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nI hear the buyer\u2019s frustration – he wants an appointment right now<\/h2>\n
Pulling the “safety” card<\/h2>\n
Just meet them at the office, right?<\/h2>\n
How practitioners can change this game<\/h2>\n