First, LOVE the name. Second, I can tell from your website that you are one of the “good guys”. Some of my best friends are Realtors Hope to run into you somewhere.

I was part of the high tech industry for many years and left so that I could envision my own business and run it as I saw fit. I want to work with those people that care about community, care about the home they live in and plan to grow roots in their neighborhood even for a short period of time.

Often we find buyers and sellers who are not about the home but are about winning, feeling like they beat someone out and are superior. These are not the people I care to work with. Neither do I want to work with people who feel they are always the victim and must screw someone else over before they might get screwed over themselves.

Realtors like everyone else must think about their intentions and integrity or we will get lost among all the scrambling for clients and loose the motivation for being entrepreneurs.

Your aspirational view toward working with clients is very sincere and well-intentioned and I applaud it. Based on a pure numbers look at your business, however, it seems like the real world looks much different.

In 2005, there were approx. 7,000,000 existing home sales in the US. The avg. selling price of those homes was 220K. Let’s assume an avg. commission of 5% and let’s also assume that a commission was paid on all of these homes (ignoring FSBOs). That results in about $77 Billion in commission dollars (I think the real number is south of this figure but what the heck).

According to NAR, there are 1.2 Million Realtors in the US. Of this number, a certain small percentage are commercial folks, maybe 10%. There are also many (like you) non-Realtor licensees so let’s add back 10%. There are also many part-timers so let’s take away 50%. This gets us to 600K licensees who are actually trying to make a go out of this business as their chosen career. Lastly, let’s assume an average commission split of 70% to the agent.

If you do the math, this results in average annual gross revenue of about 90K per agent. Now, let’s subtract 20% in expenses (just a wild ass guess here…you would know better than I) and 15% self employment tax and we end up with gross income (still subject to income and regular employment tax) of about 58K.

Now, imagine you are that 58K a year agent who sees an opportunity to work with a real live buyer or seller who, notwitstanding their sleazeball persona, WILL generate a commission at some point in the process. Hmmm, let’s wait a nanosecond before the decision is made to subvert values in favor of the cash to make the car payment.

Isn’t this the real life situation for many agents, especially those that have entered the business in the last few years. Now, imagine a slowing market and fewer sales…..

Russ

My product is “full service”, real full service that doesn’t come with a list of what I am going to do. I’m selling it to people who both need it and deserve it.

When I get too old to do what I’m doing…and I’m getting there , maybe I’ll teach a class on representing buyers and sellers well. It clearly is “my passion”. I also never get tired of looking at structures. Which reminds me…I never did go to that “new library” downtown. Maybe I’ll go there when my kids are visiting next week.