It’s a Dog Eat Dog World Out There
I had a buyer in town for the last three days looking at homes. She’s pretty motivated so we saw all 25-ish homes she honed in on online. We did see some very nice ones and found a few for her to bring her other half to see next week, but many of the listings were dogs. Hopefully the four legged dogs out there won’t be offended by this characterization.
But seriously, talk about overpriced, under-staged garbage listings. Dirty, cluttered, poorly maintained homes with prices that are extremely optimistic made up about a third of the inventory we looked at. And that doesn’t even count the four listings that we could not get access to for various reasons, including a newly installed tenant, a seller who doesn’t return showing request calls, a busted pipe, and a fire in the bedroom. The worst part of the whole ordeal was the unrealistic picture that the listing agents painted with their descriptions and photos on the MLS and other marketing media. Wonderful! Beautiful! Don’t Pass This One By! Do they really think they can trick someone in to buying this junk?
Your Listings Reflect Your Brand – Are They Saying ‘Woof’?
I was not the only one who was disappointed though. My client was also miffed, and she stated that she felt like our time was being wasted because of misrepresented listings. We drove many miles out of our way to see some of these homes only to find that they did not measure up, either the description was not realistic or, in some cases, the photos were taken in 1992 and don’t even closely resemble the house in its current, pre-foreclosure state. My client and I discussed the fact that one or two of them may be a good fit for a certain kind of buyer, but that the advertisement did nothing to target the people who might be interested.
The most interesting thing she said – and this was unsolicited and un-prompted – is really worth mulling over. After a couple of bad showings in a row that happened to have the same familiar real estate sign in front of it, she turned and said to me ‘This XYZ Real Estate company is not very professional, is it?’ And when we pulled up to another home with the same sign out front she said ‘Uh oh, this should be fun.’
So she left from her visit with a very bad impression of a certain Brand, based solely on their listings that she was looking at. I say brand because these homes were not, in fact, even listed with the same company. They were listed by several different offices which happened to be the same franchise. A franchise that, until recently, had a reputation of hiring only the most experienced agents. What happened to that? Did they lose track of their goals and loosen their standards in order to compete? Is this new strategy working for them? I’m guessing not, but I could be wrong.
Are You a Mangy Mutt or a Purebred?
Your listing inventory is a reflection of your business and, like it or not, buyers and sellers and agents judge your professionalism based on the listings you take and how you market them. Are you using this to your advantage? What do your listings say about you, your business and your brand?
