Tag Archives: agent

Inman News and St. Joseph

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[photopress:St_Joe.jpg,thumb,alignright]Dustin, Glenn Roberts and I received an email yesterday from Bill over at The Real Estate Cafe, about an Inman News article on the use of St. Joseph statues to sell real estate, and a comment I made on it. Dustin didn’t know about the practice, which is fairly well known around the Country, so I thought I’d shed some light on why, how and when the statue is used in the real estate business, from my personal perspective.

Many years a go I had a wonderful client who was losing her home. She had started her own business and had used her home as collateral for the business start up expenses. Her husband had a good job, they were doing well financially. She was not behind on her mortgage payments. They had lived in their home for a very long time with their now grown daughter and little poodle. But the lien against the house for the business bankruptcy was causing them to lose it.

The woman was so beside herserlf, because she caused it. She was a dynamic person. So when she approached me rather sheepishly one day with a request, I was a little surprised at her quietness and hesitancy. She said, “I really need your help with this and I don’t know how to ask you to do this. Someone told me to plant a St. Joseph statue in my back yard upside down and all will be OK. I wouldn’t have any idea where to get one, since I’m Jewish, and I thought you might be able to do that for me. I know it’s a lot to ask of a real estate professional, but since you’re Italian…I thought…”

While Bill over at The Real Estate Cafe, and many Catholics, are up in arms over using St. Joseph in this manner, I didn’t hesitate to jump into my car and find the little plastic statue shown here. I didn’t know there were actually “St. Joseph kits” designed for this purpose. I just went to the same place I might buy rosary beads and they knew right away what I needed. I went back to the house. It was one of those houses that appraised at $185,000 but the owner “had to have $205,000”. When I first listed it I didn’t know why they were selling it, or let’s say I wasn’t buying their story that they were just downsizing. I didn’t know why they HAD to have a certain price.

The owner wasn’t present when I performed my little ritual for the first time of “planting St. Joseph on his head in the yard”. Needless to say it worked. The owners received the price they had to have from a buyer who loved the house. It was one of my favorite sales, as the woman came home every day at lunch to vacuum. This was in the days when agents called the office for an appointment and no one in my office would speak with her. They thought she was difficult, I knew she was distressed. I asked her to remove the blue tablecloth in the kitchen and replace it with a white one. An hour later there was not one white table cloth, but two, so that if it got dirty she could quickly lift off the top one. She worked like a dog to get top dollar, I came up with the spiffiest flyer anyone had ever seen and she and I, together with St. Joseph, accomplished the objective that seemed near impossible.

The bankruptcy attorney cut the commission down at the last second and my office manager was freaking out. She even went to the closing where the bankruptcy attorney, she and the other agent were duking it out. I stayed outside with my clients while they where fighting, and assured them that it was one of my favorite sales, regardless of what happened in there. It was truly a pleasure to have known them and to have helped them in their dark hour. I never contacted them again because I knew I was part of a memory they should never have to revisit. “Follow up postcards” from me would have been painful reminders of a time they wanted to put behind them.

While Bill is upset over the fact that there are some agents who order St. Joseph statues in bulk like business cards, the custom of burying St. Joseph to assist in the quest of real estate pursuits goes back to at least the 1500s, when St. Theresa of Avila buried a St. Joseph medal. They needed some land for a Church and St. Theresa buried a St. Joseph medal in a plot of ground that was perfect, but they could not afford, and of course they did eventually raise enough money to buy the land with St. Joseph’s assitance.

St. Joseph is “the worker”. He’s the symbol that any pursuit backed by one’s sincere desire and hard work is achieveable. For many years after he helped my clients, I had this little statue (right side up) where ever I worked. When I had too many closings all at the same time, I would lay him down and put a little felt blanket over him and tell him it was time to rest. St. Joseph and I performed some great miracles together and he was my guiding force my first few years in the real estate business.

We haven’t heard about this custom for quite awhile because it has been a seller’s market. But based on Inman News giving the custom some attention recently, it looks like St. Joseph may be making a comeback. To Bill Wendell at The Real Estate Cafe, try not to think of all of the agents buying 100 statues at a time and using it as a “gimmick”. Think of my lovely story, and how St. Joseph, while standing on his head, brought some comfort to some very nice people in need of his gentle touch.

Perhaps a buyer’s perspective…

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Sometimes a comment is so darn good, it really should be a post.

Perhaps a buyer’s perspective might be useful here.

I don’t know jack about real estate. My husband and I have been burned in the past by a string of dishonest agents, most recently in January when we relocated to Seattle. We were so full of loathing for the industry in general that we seriously considered Redfin, simply because we had no hope of finding a “real person

Marketing Messages

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A message different than any I’ve seen.

We see real estate ads everywhere: The huge Realtor or Real Estate Office centric billboards, shopping carts, sitting benches at bus stops or supermarkets, radio ads, at malls, various print media, internet, etc.

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And then this. Is the message effective?

Realtor APB: How to lose clients

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In the Aug. 13th blog missive at Bloodhound Blog, Greg Swann discusses his recent experience with a client who he successfully helped with finding a new home. The twist was that the buyers he was working with had been working with another agent. As you can imagine, the other agent was frustrated and angry that they lost out on a sale. Find out how the other agent reacted by reading the story.

A few months ago I came across an excellent article in USA Today called “The waiter rule.” I shared it with all the professionals we work with. Several CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies were profiled in the article. The CEO’s would take a potential new hire (for an executive or management position) to lunch or dinner. The CEO’s would see how the recruit treated wait staff. The results were interesting and revealing. How you treat others (co-workers, support staff, allied professionals) in business relationships, however difficult or stressful, speaks volumes about your character and leadership in business.

One recent example played out in front of my wife who was signing a client. The client had questions regarding the transaction and called their loan officer. Everyone knows that if a cell phone is turned up loud enough you can hear the conversation loud and clear.

Unfortunately, for the loan officer, my wife heard every word: “…escrow does not know what the #%! they are talking about.” Not only did the comment embarrass the client, but it made us evaluate the working relationships we have with everyone we work with. Ouch.

Situational Values: How do you stack up?

Bill Swanson, CEO of Raytheon Corp. has this to say:

“Watch out for people who have situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending upon the status of the person they are interacting with. Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles.”

Why isn’t my house SOLD yet?

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You have to be in the top three of your “price tier”. Being at the high end of your “price tier” is better than being at the bottom of your “price tier”.

Photos must all be good photos and must be ordered in “hook order”.

Stop looking at what is for sale and stop looking at the comps once your property is listed for sale. If you have a lot of showings and no offers, then it is something AT the property that is causing it not to sell and you are a “bounce point”. If you don’t have enough showings it is something in the mls that is causing it not to sell, unless you HAD a lot of showings at first and dwindled down to not enough.

That’s pretty much it, pretty simple to me, but let me explain some of the lingo up there.

A “price tier” is the increment of value pre-supposed by the public websites. Go to Redfin or Windermere or John L. Scott or CBBain sites, and look at property in your area similar to yours. The site forces you to put a range of value that the site itself predetermines. The lower the price, the more important this is. Let’s look at the $250,000 to $300,000 crowd. If you are $259,000 or $276,000 or $309,000, you are “off”. The site forces people to look at $250,000 to $275,000 and $275,000 to $300,000.

If you are priced at $259,000 you are missing the people stretching up. Let’s face it, almost every single buyer in this price range “stretches up!” as in “I want to spend $250,000, but will go as high as $275,000, but NOT a PENNY MORE! By pricing your property at $254,000, you miss the boat on the $225,000 to $250,000 crowd and don’t compare well enough for the $250,000 to $275,000 crowd. $254,000 is just past the point where someone stretching up will see you at all and your property is not comparing well to those in the group at higher prices. $309,000 is just a KILLER price…the first number being the ALL IMPORTANT one. The difference between $240,000 and $249,000 is nothing, but the difference between $299,000 and $301,000 is a KILLER!! (An aside to agents here. If you are at a listing appointment and the seller insists on pricing at $301,000 instead of $299,999 or $300,000 straight up, LEAVE, RUN! It means “I don’t really want to sell this place, I’m just appeasing my ___ and pretending to be selling it.”

I could write a chapter of a book on “price tiers” alone, so let’s move on to photo “hook order”. Photo #1 is all important as many sites (like Realtor.com last I looked) require the user to click another button to get past photo #1. If photo #1 doesn’t grab them, you are dead in the water, and they are scrolling down past you.

Unfortunately mls rules hinder the seller when it comes to photo #1. There are a few rules written with agents in mind that I do not agree with, and this is one of them. Why should the mls REQUIRE that this all important key photo be…??? Seller should have more freedom in that regard. According to mls rules, photo number one must be an “exterior” shot, preferably the front door area, so agents can more easily find the property. Lame rule in my opinion if the curb appeal is NOT the seller’s claim to fame. All mls services should change that rule yesterday, giving the seller the opportunity to put his best foot forward, regardless of what constitutes each seller’s best foot. In condo complexes it is a KILLER rule. Who the heck needs to see another shot of the outside of a big condo building. Ever wonder why you see 25 shots of the same photo on a new construction project? Looks pretty dumb from the user’s perspective…but….it’s a rule. If the interior is a slab granite knockout and the exterior is 1977…this rule KILLS a seller and the mls is wrong, wrong, and wrong again for making the seller put the 1977 exterior as photo #1 vs. the knockout new kitchen. Let’s all fight for that change…or Robbie, can you reconfigure the photo order on an mls feed???

Hook Order – think attention span. Once you get past photo #1 issues, the second photo must be your absolute best of the rest. Forget about the “virtual tour” concept where you have the buyer “walking in from the front door”. If your claim to fame is your fireplace and kitchen, get those into the #2 and #3 spots. Make a list of your selling points in order or priority. If #1 is new kitchen, #2 is fireplace, #3 is double sinks in master bath…show the photos in the order of the priority of your selling features. If your #1 claim to fame is a jacuzzi in a cheap condo, don’t be afraid to put that jacuzzi as photo #2. Every picture in sequence, is a hook, as buyers often say “no I don’t want to see that one” after seeing photo #1 and #2. Having your best selling features at photo #11 and photo #12??…think about it…common sense rules.

A small note about the number of total photos. Max allowed is 15. Always use max if possible. That DOES NOT mean I want to see the open toilet and the toilet paper. It means take your best features from varied angles. Don’t be afraid to be redundant with regard to your very best selling points, but mix them up. Put it at photo #2 and #3 and bring it back to emphasize the strong selling features at photo #11 and #12, but from a different perspective as in #2 is kitchen from kitchen and #11 is kitchen from dining area.

This is getting way too long and I have things to do, so let’s just brush over the last point. If I could crack open every agent’s brain and slide in a little microchip, it would say STOP LOOKING AT THE COMPS AFTER THE PROPERTY IS LISTED FOR SALE! You look at the comps to determine your opening price out the gate, that’s all, DONE, finito!! No showings…wrong price. Plenty of showings but everything is selling but yours…condition problems. DO NOT even MENTION the sold comps once you are out the gate…irrelevant data.

And if I had nickel for everytime I heard an agent say, “I don’t know what’s wrong? We’re the ‘best game in town’ given what is for sale.” Face it…they are going to the next town, because you are an overpriced dog, regardless of the fact you have no competition in YOUR complex. What else can they buy for THEIR MONEY is the order of the day! Of utmost importance with one level condos. Buyers come in waves. “Surfing the net” is not just a catch phrase.

In the low price range the buyers are currently renting and have nothing to sell. If they don’t like what they are seeing in their price range, because the cream has been skimmed off the top, they wait for the next wave of new inventory. Your wave has crashed and your board is floating out to sea.

Buyers pay attention to these rules, and go grab all of the stale ones who aren’t following the rules, by offering them eighty cents on the dollar. Go for the $309,000s, on market for over 60 days, with only two photos, photo #1 being the sign with the name of the condo complex on it 🙂 and search for the “pick of the litter”.

The Accuracy of a Zillow Zestimate

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[photopress:2faced000.jpg,thumb,alignright] Much has been written about the accuracy, or lack thereof, of the Zillow Zestimate of a home’s value. What one must remember is that a property can sell at the low point or the high point of its Zestimated range.

I don’t pay much attention to the articles written on bubbles bursting and what kind of market we are in, because I always know what kind of market I am in. I feel it in my bones, the same way an old person can tell that it’s going to rain before the weatherman predicts it. I know just how far I can push a price in either direction, depending on market conditions and who I represent in the transaction.

Every agent wears two hats and is two-faced, because a home’s “value” has to be higher when I represent a seller and lower when I represent a buyer, and it is my “job” to “make it so”. The Zillow range of value represents my best hope for my buyer client at the low end of the range, and my highest hope for my seller client at the high end of that range. I have yet to meet an agent in the Country who can jump back and forth over that line as well as I do. I guess that makes me two-faced, but being very good at being two-faced has always been my forte.

When I represent a seller I try to get the seller to give me the key to his house for a couple of days and go away and give me “carte blanche”. Mainly because I look very odd when I am “doing my seller thing”, somewhat like “MONK” at a crime scene. I keep going out to the street and walking up to the house, at various paces from all directions, emulating a buyer getting out of the car from every possible available parking spot. The neighbors must think I’m looney.

I trim trees and bushes based on the angle of the “walk up” and what I can see and what I can’t see. “Good, that bush blocks that window frame that needs painting…bad, that tree is blocking the main feature, the rounded brick archway…then I trim the tree to “accentuate the positive” until I can see the brick archway from the position of the buyer driving by or getting out of the car, and leave the bush overgrown to “de-emphasize the negative”.

I walk into the front door 25 or more times and change things, until I remove any negative influence in my sight pettern (which is eye level side to side, without looking up or down). I always tell agents, “if you are standing in one place when you are staging a home you are “decorating” and not “staging”. Walk through and walk fast. Remove negative influence or distract the eye away from the negative with a bright vase or photo in the opposite place from the negative. If you can’t eradicate the negative, draw the eye toward the positive. That is staging, and that is why the agent has to do it themselves and not hire landscapers and decorators.

Staging is about the real estate, and a real estate professional must be in charge of what will and will not be done, to enhance the sale price.

Conversely, putting on my other hat, I take out my other face when evaluating homes with buyers. We both step into the house, and usually I walk one way and they walk the other, and I see things quite differently than they do.

They say they “love” it and I say “Oh, my God WHY?”. I get them to focus and point to what they like. Sometimes by forcing them to tell me what they like, it turns out to be a painting or a piece of furniture. I say great, let’s find that painting to put in your new house, but for now let’s go back and try this again and look at the “real estate” of this place. Sometimes, if it is vacant, I actually have to move the staging so they can see what I see.

To achieve the lowest possible price for my buyer, I either have to find a seller who has “left money on the table” or I have to find a property that is overpriced. If a house could have sold for $510,000 or $515,000, but the seller priced it at $519,000 and staged it incorrectly, I can usually get it for $500,000. That’s a standard best case scenario. If a property comes on at less than fair market value, which happens on occasion, I can usually swoop in and modify terms, to grab it while the vultures are still hovering.

Often people comment on the Zillow Zestimate wondering “Where exactly is the value of this house? Is it closer to the high end of the range or the low end of the range?” The answer is it is the agent’s job to pull “the value” in the direction of their client. When I represent the seller, I have to DO something before I hit that “live on the mls” button that makes it go higher. When I am representing a buyer I have to DO something to force it back in the other direction.

I pretend that all my clients are Captain Kirk, who command me to “make it so #2” 🙂

Why I like Zillow and Redfin by ARDELL

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[photopress:3ofhearts.jpg,thumb,alignright]I’m still scratching my head as to why agents around the country hate Zillow so much that they want to call it “Z”. Theory is that if they even whisper the name Zillow, they are spreading “the word” and helping it to become even more popular.

Zillow is a system of mathematical calculations, a tool that is easy and fun to use. So isn’t hating Zillow like hating your calculator?

I like Zillow because before they came along, all of the lead generators were about buyers. Buyers went there to look at houses and hit the big flashing “Find an Agent” button and were taken off to never-never-land where the lead generator collected a toll. Buying buyer leads has always been a joke. I can hardly go anywhere without hearing someone talking about buying a house. Every coffee shop, restaurant, the lady in line in front of you at the bank, at least 20% of the people at a barbecue…really. If you need to buy a buyer lead you need to look in the mirror and figure out why you need to trick people into hitting a big flashing button and pay for one. Time to hone up your skills and get a personality.

The innovation of Zillow is that every lead generator has asked that question: “How do we attract SELLER leads?” Even House Values knows that they cannot get enough seller leads, and they can sell them as fast as they can get them. There are more agents willing to buy seller leads from House Values in prime areas, then there are seller leads to go around. There’s a waiting list…I know…I’ve been on it for over a year. Every time they email or call me I ask…you have a seller lead spot available for 98033 or 98034. Answer is always no, but they are trying to sell me something else. Because attracting sellers rather than buyers is something the lead generator industry has been very lax at doing well.

And then comes Zillow. I don’t know what they are selling, but they clearly have the seller’s attention. Did Zillow get an Inman award for that? If not…Zillow now has the ARDELL award for innovation in lead generating sites. Don’t be waiting for the trophy, I haven’t gotten out shopping for Greg and Sharon yet, and you’re behind them.

Kudos to Zillow. Don’t know where you’re running with that ball, but kudos for putting a seller oriented site in play.

I like Redfin, because…

a lot of my past clients who came to me from blogging,

tried them first 🙂

My Friend, Bob

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[photopress:bob.jpg,thumb,alignright]Many, many years ago, my friend Bob was spilling his guts to me in a long conversation about him and “The Firm”. He was at the crossroads of life that many businesses face. Bob joined Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell & Hippel, a major lawfirm in the City of Philadelphia, in 1970, just two years before I was hired at Girard Bank, another Philadelphia mainstay.

I don’t know why I remember this conversation as vividly as if it were yesterday. Bob said, Ardell, we’re at that place. We have a great team of attorneys who all know each other and mesh well. We have a huge base of repeat clients that feel like old friends and who trust and respect us, and whom we enjoy serving. Now we have to decide whether to GET BIG or stay small.

Every time I am on the other side of a transaction with a “Top Agent”, I think of Bob and that conversation we had some 25 years ago. When I see an agent’s name on the bottom of a Purchase and Sale Agreement, when an offer comes in, but never meet that agent. All communications come through a licensed real estate assistant who just faxes papers back and forth and never meets either the buyer or the seller. The agent, who has the authority and responsibility to assist the clients in some major decisions, delegates everything to an assistant who makes “weekly calls to the client” in some pretense of “keeping in touch” on some designated every other day schedule. “Hi, just calling to let you know we are alive and well even though you never see us.”

Today, Bob is the Managing Partner of the Philadelphia office, and Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell and Hippel has offices in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cherry Hill and Wilmington…three states. Bob’s still Bob, Robert I. Whitelaw, the managing partner. When I last saw him he had fallen off his bike and was nursing a sore arm. We’re both a little older and wiser, and I often wonder if he had a chance to go back to that day, when we were laying back shooting the breeze, if he would make the same choice to go big, or would opt to stay small.

Every agent faces that crossroads sometime in their career. Do they hire two assistants and a marketing manager and five “Showing Agents” and a Transaction Coordinator? Do they go to that point where when one of their clients comes in the door, and “the agent” passes them in the hall without noticing, because they’ve hardly ever interacted with them after the first day when they met and were passed off to the “showing agent” and then the “transaction coordinator”. Do they go to that point where they don’t remember more than half of the homes they have sold or any of the people who hired them to sell it?

Bob, or course, opted for big. But I knew when we were talking that he really didn’t want to do that, and felt he had to for the sake of “The Firm”. Aside from hiring a “free lance” assistant during heavy times, and occasionally pulling in a “showing agent” when circumstances put me in a position of having too much to do on a given day, I’ve pretty much put a cap on how many people I will “take on” all at once.

I know I can do a bang up job if I handle 24-36 clients in a year’s time. I will remember their faces, and their spouses and their children and their home that I helped them to acquire. When Travis called me “back” when I was in L.A. to sell the place I had sold to him, I remembered every single aspect of the time we had spent together over two years before. Travis didn’t hesitate to wait for me to return to Seattle from L.A. He didn’t call any other agents, just me. We spent hours together getting the place ready and reconnected. We hugged, we strategized, we painted and primped. We reviewed offers and talked and kicked back and had a glass of wine.

And so today I think of Bob, and his reluctant choice to get big and not stay small. I’m very, very happy today that I chose to know all of my clients, and be with them through every tiny aspect of the process. But “What About, Bob?” and his choice…I’ll have to give him a call…I still miss him after all these years.

Doing Whatever It Takes

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[photopress:woman.jpg,thumb,alignright]I have to admit that it felt a little odd, even to me, for us to be personally painting the kitchen of my newest listing. We, the owner and I, were getting his place ready to go on market. He had his hands full with his own projects that needed to be done before we entered the listing in the mls. The color scheme of the condo was already transcendental. I wanted the kitchen to be a light color, because darker colors minimize space, and the kitchen in an 827 square foot condo is not something you want to minimize.

In my own house, I like to “repeat” a color by adding different amounts of a “smashing” color in one space , to white paint for tone on tone effects. And given this kitchen had a “pass through” to the dining room/living room “flexible” space, I wanted the kitchen to be “a glow” of the color in the eating area. Given there is not much wall space in the kitchen, I decided it would be easier and faster if I just did it myself, rather than try to explain how to mix the color to the right degree of “glow”.

I was thinking of “anonymous Joe” when I was making the bed yesterday before the first showings. It was “kind of” made already 🙂 I went around changing lightbulbs from 60 watt to 100 watt in the entry and hall, scrubbing the grout in the tile floor of the entry and kitchen, taking the “mauve” colored towel the owner had used that morning off the towel bar and ditching it in his hamper, because the mauve towel he had used was clashing badly with the citrus colored wall behind it. Turned his hand towel, the one I had picked out as “the right color” (but he wasn’t supposed to USE!) around so the tag wasn’t showing. Several other truly “anal” things, standing in the doorway of every single space from every single angle, and tweaking until I was “satisfied”.

This morning I was thinking of Russ’ before the fact contract, with a long list of “services and metrics” that all agents will provide to all. Some list of generic things that people think provide value, when really every single person needs “Whatever it takes”, and whatever it takes changes from individual to individual, be they buyer clients or seller clients. In 16 years I’ve never had to paint someone’s kitchen before, and frankly hope I never have to again. But at this time, for this client, that’s what needed to be done. The poor owner was wasted! It was hot, he had been working on “his stuff” until he was ready to slash his wrists, and I just rolled up my sleeves and chipped in from morning until night until we were done. Sometimes doing it with them, helps keep them going and sometimes my crawling around in every space helps me find things that need to be fixed, that the owner truly just never noticed. The more I do, the more I can head the home inspector off at the pass, so the seller knows his true net proceeds better, after repairs, before I hit the button sending him “live” into the MLS.

I never sat in his house with a little marketing flip chart. I never provided some big list of “services and metrics”. I didn’t even have a written contract saying I would be paid, while putting in twenty to thirty hours helping him get the place ready. When he said half jokingly after all the work was done, “maybe I should stay here”, I took his hand and looked him in the eye and said, “Seriously, if that is what you want to do, if you decide not to sell it after all, that’s OK. Don’t feel like you have to sell it now, just because we worked so hard getting it ready. You do whatever makes you happy.

I remember training a few new agents and making a little bag for each of them to put in their trunk with windex and paper towel and toilet cleaner and brushes (for the vacant house toilet rings). I remember a new agent who “got in it for the money” refusing to touch the bag and saying “I don’t want that in the trunk of my car!”. I remember him refusing to go measure the unfinished basement size, because he saw a cobweb and he had his “good suit” on. No, he’s not in the business anymore…actually he never did sell a house and yes, I did fire him and he went to a local big firm before he quit altogether.

Real estate is a business like none other, and their truly IS a reason why “we make the big bucks”. There’s a lot of reasons why we make the “big bucks”. But most importantly it’s because we do “Whatever It Takes” to sell the house “For the HIGHEST Price, In the Least Amount of Time and with the Least Inconvenience to the Seller”. This owner should have an offer within 3-5 days of “going live”, at the highest price achieveable, and be able to go back to watching his TV (which I have moved 🙂 from his living room to his bedroom). To do this job right, we can’t have that House Values goal of having 20 to 30 more “leads” this month!

We can’t, as an industry, keep doing less and less for more and more. And frankly, Joe and other consumers cannot keep hounding me about exactly what I am going to do, before I meet them and see “their product”. Because clearly there are different prices because of the different amounts of effort needed to sell their home at the highest price, in the least amount of time and with the least inconvenience to them (short showing period).

Those who want to trade in one “price fits all” for a lower “price fits all”, well…I thought you wanted a “fair price” for the job at hand and an end to the price being “fixed” at “6%”. If all you want to do is trade in one price fits all for a lower price fits all, with the guy who needs more service STILL getting paid by the guy who needs less service….I truly hope that’s not the case.

Let’s let each client pay for their individual service, some higher and some lower and always a fair price for the service required to achieve the goal. I truly hope THAT change is the one coming down the pike. Let’s end “price fixing” period. Not just trade in one fixed price for a different fixed price.

Because if it’s just about a tug of war on which fixed price to use…then I’ll have to move over to the other side of that rope. Please tell me it ain’t so.

New Book – Must Read!

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Editor’s Note: I’m excited to introduce Seattle Eric as a new contributor on RCG. It must be six months ago that I first approached Eric to see if he would be interesting in coming on as a contributor because I really liked the writing style he demonstrated on his blog about life as a Seattle real estate investor. Now that he’s bitten the bullet and switched to a career as a real estate agent, I’m even more excited to have him on board!

For my first post on the RCG, I’d like to promote my new book, which so happens to also be a topic of much interest recently. All proceeds will benefit…well..me.

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(available while supplies last….shipping and handling extra…)