Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Raising the Bar
I have the great fortune to be able to work with many real estate professionals. My job is to reach out and support them from an MLS perspective. In the past, that meant explaining how to use our particular flavor of a search engine software. However, my passion is to provide them with the tools, techniques and education to become better practitioners - people who can connect to their clients and are willing to "do what is right" even when it sometimes is not as profitable for themselves.
To "do what is right" may take a lot of soul searching. In the February 9th issue of Inman News, Kris Berg, broker-owner of San Diego Castles Realty, wrote an article: "The Weakest Link in Real Estate". In that article, she identifies the weakest link: the weakest, least competent agent." For now, I'd like to quote from Kris' article:
Sure, as real estate agents we are regulated. We are tested, we are licensed, and we are thumb-printed. Now in California, our license numbers must appear on all of our "first point of contact" marketing materials as a nod to the concept of consumer protection, but not until June. (I guess it takes time to implement such bold, sweeping changes.) And then we are set free to roam the earth and do whatever we please in whatever way we might wish under the banner ad of delivering the American dream.
So far so good, but this is where everything becomes backwards. The familiar employer-employee relationship is replaced with an industry of anarchy. Brokers may control the boardroom, but the licensees are calling the shots. The 1099 system turns the food chain on its head. Agents have been compared to plankton feeding a sea of bigger fish -- brokers, technology companies, and a long list of settlement and other service providers -- but agents are really the hunters and gatherers (or as some might call us, the predators) upon which an entire industry relies for their share of the spoils. And it is ultimately the licensees who are making this bed in which we all must lie.
The traditional brokerages are partly to blame, certainly. We are entrenched in a backwards system of agents interviewing and hiring their "employers," and the agent's choices are limitless. The brokerages make money because of the work that their agents do, and the temptation is simply too great to strip-mine a licensed populace in the pursuit of a few, shiny diamonds. Yet it is ultimately the work of each agent that reflects on every other agent and on the entire industry.
I have spent many hours on the "higher barriers to entry" bandwagon, and rest assured that I am still occupying my seat. Argue that the free market will weed out the less adept, but I seem to recall having heard that argument before. Oh yes, the banking system. And Wall Street.
It's much more than just an issue of licensing standards. Once crowned "licensee," no minimum standards exist for job performance. There are no annual reviews, no measures for excellence other than the production board, and few consequences for bad behavior. I run a small brokerage, but I am not a corporate muckety-muck. I am first and foremost a working agent, the first point of contact, and the things I see daily from my vantage point beneath the rhetoric and on the ground continue to amaze. I see many stellar agents who hold themselves to the highest standards even while their brokers don't, but we are all only as strong as the weakest. Tough times bring out not only the best but the worst in people, and I am seeing more of the worst lately, ranging from gray-area ethical breaches to huge storm clouds of malpractice and incompetence.
Common sense can't be regulated, of course, and ethics, being subjective, can't truly be prescribed in check-list form. Laziness is not a crime, and excellence will always be measured on a sliding scale of consumer expectations. But by leaving 3 million little businesses largely unmanaged, unchecked and unaccountable, we continue a dangerous precedent.
Kris' article hints at the heart of how to improve the real estate industry:
Are you ready for this challenge?
----
I'm passionate about our world. Enter the Conversation!
To "do what is right" may take a lot of soul searching. In the February 9th issue of Inman News, Kris Berg, broker-owner of San Diego Castles Realty, wrote an article: "The Weakest Link in Real Estate". In that article, she identifies the weakest link: the weakest, least competent agent." For now, I'd like to quote from Kris' article:
Sure, as real estate agents we are regulated. We are tested, we are licensed, and we are thumb-printed. Now in California, our license numbers must appear on all of our "first point of contact" marketing materials as a nod to the concept of consumer protection, but not until June. (I guess it takes time to implement such bold, sweeping changes.) And then we are set free to roam the earth and do whatever we please in whatever way we might wish under the banner ad of delivering the American dream.
So far so good, but this is where everything becomes backwards. The familiar employer-employee relationship is replaced with an industry of anarchy. Brokers may control the boardroom, but the licensees are calling the shots. The 1099 system turns the food chain on its head. Agents have been compared to plankton feeding a sea of bigger fish -- brokers, technology companies, and a long list of settlement and other service providers -- but agents are really the hunters and gatherers (or as some might call us, the predators) upon which an entire industry relies for their share of the spoils. And it is ultimately the licensees who are making this bed in which we all must lie.
The traditional brokerages are partly to blame, certainly. We are entrenched in a backwards system of agents interviewing and hiring their "employers," and the agent's choices are limitless. The brokerages make money because of the work that their agents do, and the temptation is simply too great to strip-mine a licensed populace in the pursuit of a few, shiny diamonds. Yet it is ultimately the work of each agent that reflects on every other agent and on the entire industry.
I have spent many hours on the "higher barriers to entry" bandwagon, and rest assured that I am still occupying my seat. Argue that the free market will weed out the less adept, but I seem to recall having heard that argument before. Oh yes, the banking system. And Wall Street.
It's much more than just an issue of licensing standards. Once crowned "licensee," no minimum standards exist for job performance. There are no annual reviews, no measures for excellence other than the production board, and few consequences for bad behavior. I run a small brokerage, but I am not a corporate muckety-muck. I am first and foremost a working agent, the first point of contact, and the things I see daily from my vantage point beneath the rhetoric and on the ground continue to amaze. I see many stellar agents who hold themselves to the highest standards even while their brokers don't, but we are all only as strong as the weakest. Tough times bring out not only the best but the worst in people, and I am seeing more of the worst lately, ranging from gray-area ethical breaches to huge storm clouds of malpractice and incompetence.
Common sense can't be regulated, of course, and ethics, being subjective, can't truly be prescribed in check-list form. Laziness is not a crime, and excellence will always be measured on a sliding scale of consumer expectations. But by leaving 3 million little businesses largely unmanaged, unchecked and unaccountable, we continue a dangerous precedent.
Kris' article hints at the heart of how to improve the real estate industry:
- To train every agent to be their own CEO
- To demand that every agent's business activities be transparent, like a company's financial statements
- To require brokers to manage and hold their agents accountable for their activities.
Are you ready for this challenge?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
