In this article you said: “you guilt-tripped us into free home tours, even though it hasn’t helped sales”

It’s not about whether or not you had more sales, it’s about the buyer having choices. My support of alternative models is about buyers and sellers having more choices. Taking away the choice for a buyer to see the home with their buyer’s agent, is not about more or less sales.

You offer YOUR CLEINT the opportunity to see the house WITH you, because it is the right thing to do WHEN and IF YOUR CLIENT prefers it that way.

I spent lots of time in the blogosphere yesterday during the Yankee Blog Swap and learned a great deal…

My new article address your “Procuring Cause” question as well. So I’m interested in your thoughts on that one.

As to your comment here, understand that “Redfin buyers” are those who are simply not getting those advices from anyone. They are not being adequately represented with regard to the issues you have raised. They are not meeting the right agents out on the street. And so they are saying, if this is all I get (meaning someone to open the door and whip out a contract), I may as well keep 2/3 of the commission.

When offered full and adequate knowledge, skill and service, they choose that. But lacking that…they choose Redfin, and rightly so.

I went “sideways” in my article, as I am known to do. So I’m back here to address your issue more specifically. You are asking questions of great value to you. You are also asking questions that require an agent to answer…not any agent, but your agent. So if you have these kind of questions, and generic info posted (as I still will) is not enough, and it won’t be, you need to hire an agent that you “likely” will use later, to answer these questions adequately.

Your needs are great, your having recently relocated here. But know that the answers are of great value and cost something. The one mistake I made this year was the time spent on educating persons relocated here, who ended up using me to answer all of their questions and then using the “relocation agent” assigned to them by the company they work for. They wanted to pick my brain and then were forced to use the agent whose brain and info they did not value. So someone else got paid for my advices.

This is common. If you recently relocated here, and your company paid any portion of your costs to relocate here, you already DO have an agent whether you know it or not.

In any case, it is obvious to me and other agents reading your questions, that you need an agent now. You need a lot of “pre-information” as all relocated people do. That is why your company almost always provides you with one from day one…even if you are not going to buy for a year to 18 months from now.

I agree, it’s not right for a buyer to pick your brain and then use that information to write an offer through a discount, limited-service or rebate firm. I understand that Sandy wasn’t doing that, but some Buyers do.

You have years of experience and expertise, and that has a definite value. Even if a Buyer “finds” the house themselves online, and you advise them, write the contract, negotiate the sale, guide them through the inspection, lending, title, and escrow process and that “only” takes so many hours, they are not paying you “by the hour”, but for your expertise in getting the sale to closing.

It’s like the electrician who comes out, switches a wire, and charges you $300 for 2 minutes of work. You’re paying $10 for the wire switch, but $290 for him to know which wires to switch.

A Buyer may be able to get a $5000 rebate at the closing of their condo by using a discount or rebate firm, and maybe if they would have used you, they’d get nothing. But you would have told them about the impending condo association’s special assessment for rot in the building envelope that’s going to cost them $10,000 over the next 3 years or would have urged the buyer of a house to have the LP siding inspected by an expert in that material and saved them $20,000 in siding replacement. You just never know. But having good representation has a definite value, as does specific knowledge about the area, and it’s important not to discount the value good advice brings to a transaction.

I am writing a new article on this right now. Should be up within 15 minutes or so. It has more to do with “online” services and Redfin, than you personally. Since it is a dilemma created by online business models across the board, I decided to devote an entire article on the topic.