I captain a women’s volleyball team that plays in Kirkland on Monday nights. It’s a blast partly because the women I play with are aggressive, fun, and focused. We have a great time and it seems that everyone’s attitude is very positive which makes for fun times for me when I’m not focused on working.
For the past several years our team has either won or been in the top 3 standings in the league. I’m expecting us to be high in the standings already into our 3rd week as we’ve got a great line up this year and the addition of Joylyn to our team has been a boost to our defense. She’s got great instincts and is a wonderful all around defender. Thanks for joining us, Joylyn!
I’ve used my passion for playing volleyball frequently as a metaphor for how we handle our work at Team Reba. We all have a position to play and if we aren’t all covering our area then we’re exposed to a loss or at least losing a point. So, we work hard at making sure we all know our positions and what is expected of us as well as knowing what each team member’s job is so we can either cover, if needed, or to switch out if necessary to execute a particular play. Michael and I do this regularly as we work with investment clients and the more time we have with Nina in our office she is learning more and more about working with me on our residential listing business and our Concierge Services.
We don’t use the typical model of a team that we’ve seen growing more and more where one big agent is the face of the organization and then a bunch of people come in to act as buyer’s agents. What I’ve noticed in these kinds of organizations is that sellers and their listings end up getting hurt because sometimes the best pricing may not be competitive enough to sell the home in a reasonable amount of time – the goal of the agent is to have several open houses. Nationally the average is that only about 1% of all homes sell from activity generated at a public open house. What an open house is used for is to bring in new business to the agent holding the house open because prospective buyers will be there – and they’re usually not working with an agent yet because they are early on in their search and “testing the waters” to determine if they’ll buy. Several reports done over the years have proven that most of the public will work with the first agent they talk to regardless of recommendations that at least 3 agents should be interviewed. The statistics make a strong argument for some of agents to continue using this method of open houses. Many new agents are the faces you’ll see on a given Sunday holding a house open and usually they are pretty bored the majority of the time unless there is a lot of activity going on in the house.
Part of the activity might be interested (read nosy) neighbors who come by to see the house and it’s a chance for the agent to get a name and maybe an email address for follow up. Most agents know that open houses are a marketing tool for them and with the Internet today they are less useful than they used to be in helping sell a home. We only use them when we have a particularly unusual home or one that needs a little help getting people in the door because of difficult location circumstances such as being on a busy road.
Another reason we don’t push them as a top marketing tool (we focus on the Internet instead) in our tool chest is because there are some security risks involved for the seller and the agent. Putting out a bunch of signs to tell the random public invites people you don’t know to come see you in an empty house. It’s not imaginary that many agents across the nation are attacked in vacant homes on an annual basis – sometimes it’s an open house and others are because of targeted attacks. The local NWMLS posts on the agent only site when unusual activity is reported with agents in our area but not all occurences get reported. We’ve also seen reports where items are stolen from the home from personal items, to medications, to decorative items, to electronics, and more. If only 1 person is covering a large home at an open house then the potential for security risk goes up. Although every once in a while the violence happens between a client and the agent. This story highlights an agent in CA being killed by his seller in a dispute over which offer to take in a competing offer situation.
If you have an agent that is pushing you to have lots of open houses get the details about why they really want to do them. Arm yourself with information and use it to work with your agent and to not be run over by them. If an agent isn’t focused on selling your home and explaining to you exactly why they use particular methods of marketing then they may not be the best agent for you.
