Vlad has generously allowed me to contribute to his blog, and I thank him for the opportunity. I’ve been in a really foul mood lately, and I’m gonna tell you why. Other than Vlad’s ongoing troubles, I really get annoyed by some things I’ve encountered in my short time as a Realtor®. Some of them occur often, others not so much, but they all qualify as PITA’s. Here’s the “short list”:
I am annoyed by…
…agents who purport to be the best thing since sliced bread, but can’t be bothered to confirm my showing requests. Come on people, your client wants to sell their house, don’t they? You want to sell your client’s house don’t you? Then how’s about calling me back to confirm a damn showing before the listing expires, OK? And don’t make me drive 100 miles out of my way to pick up the damn keys. Use a frakkin lockbox or meet me at the property. It’s literally the least you can do.
...agents who can’t take a picture if their life depended on it, but slap any old pic up on the MLS and call it good. Oh my God, leave that awful picture of the basement being used as a trash dump on the flash card and take a real picture, if you don’t mind. No shirtless relatives, no pets puking on the floor, no kitchens with sinks full of unwashed dishes, no front yards full of toys, trash cans or junk cars, OK? Can you handle that? Good.
...agents who, even though their listing has been up for a month or longer, can’t be bothered to even take a picture of it, let alone a bad one. Can you take a picture? Do you even have a camera? No? Borrow one, or better yet, buy one. Get your teenage son to take the pictures if you can’t. Or ask Athol Kay to take them for you. You can’t get much better than that.
…agents who take it upon themselves to speak for their clients when you present an offer. Please, DO NOT tell me that your client will not accept my full price, cash offer. DO NOT tell me that they won’t fix an inspection issue or grant an extension. Present the offer! Ask them if they’ll fix the problem or grant an extension. DO YOUR JOB!
…agents who place ads in the paper for a listing, but the picture accompanying the ad is of the agent, not the house. What are you trying to sell, a house or you?? Get your ugly mug outta the ad and show the house, will ya? That’s what buyers want to see!
...agents who, the closer to closing you get, make themselves as hard to contact as possible. After 10 voicemails, 16 emails and a dozen notes sent by carrier pigeon, do you think you could call me to set up a walk-through?? HUH??
…agents who “buy” listings. The house has no curb appeal, it’s outdated, the seller wants to price it so far above market value that The Donald himself wouldn’t touch it. Your mouth makes promises your performance can’t keep, but you’ve baffled the seller with enough BS to fertilize the Sahara. Puh-lease. If you can’t be honest with the seller and tell him his house will never sell at that price and in that condition, at least be true to yourself and have the decency to pass. Or are you really that hard up for business?
…agents who get emotionally involved in the transaction. OMG, don’t get me started. The next time you call me and yell at me so loud the phone cracks, you call me names and tell me what a jerk you think I am because I told you the truth, you and I are gonna throw down. After I’ve had a cool, calm and collected conversation with your broker…
…agents who expect you to do all the work, theirs included. Um, you want me to what? Set up your inspection for you? Contact a lender to see if they’ll pre-approve your client? Get your client’s signature on a contract because they live closer to me?? Pay for your client’s credit check?? Let an appraiser into your listing because you’re on vacation?? Show your client my listing because you’re at your real job?? Why sure, anything else? Shine your shoes? Wash the car? I’ll do anything…just sign over that commission check to ME on closing day. (And we have done some pretty strange things, because if we didn’t the deal would have fallen apart.)
…agents who think asking my clients questions is OK. You’re asking MY clients why they’re selling? How much of a down payment they can make? Even if they’ve considered using another agent?? In FRONT of me??? Are you NUTS??
…agents who delay putting their listings in the MLS so they can try to sell it themselves first. You know who you are. You take that primo listing because you know the perfect buyer for it, so you sort of forget to enter the listing in the MLS and call them to come see it TONIGHT. No sense in letting any other agents horn in on YOUR commission, right?
…agents who use professional sounding email addresses like, realtor4U@aol.com. Like that has an air of professionalism about it. More like an air of cheapness and laziness, because you can’t be bothered to buy a $10 domain, set up a decent web site and actually use it for your email address. Even johndoe@johndoe.com would be better than your Mickey Mouse address. Sorry, Mickey.
…agents who whine about having no business instead of trying to make business. You know who you are, too. The ones who sit at the office and play Solitaire all day or chit chat with the other whiners. The ones who always watch as we put together deal after deal and then have the audacity to say, “You’re so lucky that so much business falls in your lap. I wish I was as lucky as you are.” The ones who never volunteer for floor time or open houses, have no SOI, never prospect, never do any of the things that would make business for you. No, you’d rather wait for something to “fall in your lap.” Well, good luck. In this case, it’s NOT better to be lucky than good.
…agents who send me flyers about their listings, even though they’re 1000 miles away. I swear these guys have access to the entire NAR email database and they’re not afraid to abuse it. Sorry guys, I do not have any clients chomping at the bit to buy a million dollar condo on the beach, or a 50 acre horse farm in the Rockies, or the Georgian mansion on the 18th green of the golf course. Nor am I myself interested in any of those properties. All you’re doing, as this entire post implies, is pissing me off! I unsubscribe but it does NO GOOD! What do I have to do to make you understand, I don’t want your “spamarketing”, so STOP IT!
Ok. There you have it. Are these legitimate beefs? To me, yes. Are they petty? Maybe. I could have added a few more, but I’ve already hijacked Vlad’s blog long enough. Maybe there are some that I forgot that really get under your skin. If so, drop in a comment and vent. You’ll feel much better. Oh, and before I forget, there are a few things that clients do that annoy me, too. But that’s another post…
AgentRank is attempting to rank real estate agents based on professional experience, home sales, endorsement from former clients and other variables.
The founders of the AgentRank are very clear that rankings can not be manipulated and if you want to rank well in their system all you need to do is to sell homes and keep your clients happy. One of the factors that will affect agent’s rankings is based on whether or not the agent publishes a blog. Hopefully it will encourage agents using the system to start their own blog.
Out of curiosity I used the system to search for the real estate agents in my area. I found 7 agents, whose rank varied from 8 to 1. I presuming that 10 is the most an agent can be ranked at.
While I did not find any familiar faces, few things about AgentRank system jumped at me. While claiming to rank real estate agents based on endorsements from former clients, there is no mechanism for that if you would like to endorse an agent you worked with in the past. Since some of the agents do have endorsements at AgentRank, it leaves me to think that these endorsements are completely under control of individual agents.
While one agent on the list is in the real estate for 230 years- a clear advantage as far as rankings are concerned based on professional experience.
To provide unbiased ranking can be a difficult task. I learning that from my attempt of ranking real estate blogs. So I am sure AgentRank is working hard to improve their website and it’s features.
At the end of the day you have nothing to loose when you decide to join AgentRank. The membership is free and you will get some extra exposure and a link to your blog. You can also follow AgentRank Blog for further news and developments. Feel free to come back and share your experience with AgentRank.
BidEup, a newly launched website, claims to bring innovation to real estate industry, through “patent-pending methodology” (or did they mean technology?). Only real estate agents are welcomed to list properties on the website- at a minimum rate of $120 per 30 day listing. If you would like to list your property with all possible bells and whistles, it will set you back by about $300.
The innovation apparently lies in, as claimed by the website, being “first legally binding virtual market place”. However it is not clear what exactly this “legally binding virtual marketplace” is.
It may very well be that bidEup.com has some outstanding marketing plan in place. However, from a quick glimpse it looks like another “lead generating” website.
The New Jersey Association of Realtors is opposing legislation that would allow real estate brokers and agents to provide cash rebates or other gifts to buyers and sellers.
Members of the state’s Real Estate Commission, a regulatory agency that enforces licensing law in the state, has considered the legislation but hasn’t yet announced a position….
….While officials at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division have taken action to oppose bans on rebates in several states, New Jersey Association of Realtors officials contend that the offer of rebates can actually be harmful to consumers.
The idea to compile such a list was born a few months ago. Just as other similar top lists where appearing. After talking to Mark from 45n5- who is an outstanding programmer and internet marketer, a decision was made to bring the idea to fruition. Mark was in charge of programing the list, while my job was to find the blogs to be placed in the list- an easy job I should say for a former real estate agent.
So I present you today with GeerRealtors Top 100 Real Estate Blogs. It is a must bookmark page for many reasons. Not only will you be able to see who is who among real estate bloggers. You can also see the latest posts from the blogs featured on the list. If you are on the list this will give you an opportunity to see how your blog compares to your colleagues and/or competitors. Visit those blogs and see what are they doing that makes them more popular than yours.
If you visit the list, you will notice that there are actually more than 100 blogs.This means that you also can submit your blog, and then work your way to the top. If I have missed your blog feel free to submit your blog, and depending to the rankings elsewhere (Google Page Rank, Alexa Rankings, Technorati Rank) you may very well end up in the top 100. If not, you have some work to do.
The list will be updated once a week, so if you see N/A next to your blog, it means it was added after the last update. Just bookmark the Top 100 Real Estate Blogs and come to look at it one week from now. Finally I hope the list itself will bring you a visitor or two.
And now, without further ado, I present you with the first edition of Top 100 Real Estate Blogs:
Most of the real estate agents in the United States work for a commission- which means they do not get paid unless a property is sold. This of course can translate in endless hours of showing properties to clients who are not serious in purchasing a house. The work that real estate agents perform, in other industries can translate into $100 per hour or more. How do you think real estate industry would look if there was some sort of “hourly fee agreement” for using your services? People have no problem paying their doctors, accountants, lawyers and other professionals hourly fee. Why is real estate different?
I personally think an hourly fee agreement would accomplish two very important things:
It would change the attitude of clients. People tend to value more the services they pay for.
It would filter out serious buyers or sellers from those who are “just shopping around”.
What do you think? Feel free to leave comments as well as participating in the poll:
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If you are not an real estate agent, you are welcomed to participate in the above poll as well. It would be great to know your feedback.
Pay per click advertising for real estate website may be the quickest way to bring visitors. It also maybe the quickest way to loose money. Bidding on keywords in real estate can be very competitive and may cost you $20 or more . If you think you are spending way to much money on the pay per click campaigns, this article may just give you some useful tips.
One of the major reason why the prices for particular keywords are so high has nothing to do with the actual “demand” for that keyword. Rather it has to do with website design itself. If we were to look what kind of websites occupying top positions for some of the most desirable keywords in the Google sponsored search results, you may notice that many of those websites are designed in flash. It is hard to imagine that such a website can pass Google’s scrutiny when it comes to the “landing page” quality.
Whenever you start a pay per click campaign, Google releases a bot that checks your page. As part of of that check up Google looks whether or not your lading page contains the keywords on which you are about to bid.
If you are a real estate agent or broker and have outsourced the maintenance of your website to some one, ask them if your website is created in flash or if there is extensive use of java-scripts in your website. If the answer is yes, you probably need to look for some one else to manage your website.
Another obstacle that you as advertiser can face is that in real estate transaction do not take place right on your website. Therefore there is no simple way to calculate your ROI (return on investment). If you have to way to capture your visitors by offering the a sign up for your newsletter.
Well, you might say, I am not sending any newsletters via e-mail. If it is true you maybe giving away leads to some one else. Most Realtors get into a habit of sending out quarterly or monthly newsletters. It is not so difficult these days to turn those newsletters into a format deliverable via e-mail. If you think that is a good idea, then you should incorporate some sort of sign up form on your website, and even place that form on every single landing page that you are driving traffic to via pay per click campaigns.
However managing big e-mail lists can be a task on its own, but that is a subject for another post.
Some times paying a higher price for the keywords is a “necessary evil” and there may not be a way around it. However if you pay the price without attempting to capture your visitors, you indeed maybe spending your money foolishly.
July 3, 2008
Posted in Real Estate, The Harriman Team 
While one agent on the list is in the real estate for 230 years- a clear advantage as far as rankings are concerned based on professional experience.
GR Rank*
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