Tag Archives: customers

What I love about this business: the people

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Escrow is one of the toughest jobs in real estate, for a lot of different reasons. But, it is by far the most interesting from our experiences in that both Lynlee and I have sold (circa 1990) as licensee’s, bought and sold homes as homeowner’s and today as owners of an escrow company.

For example, in a recent day at the office we have had people curse at us, a customer who threatens to sue everyone in the deal including the clerk at the corner 7-11, an angry client yelling at their loan officer so loud that other tennants in our building start calling to see if everything is ok, then, before we have a chance to catch our breath, my wife comes smiling out of the signing room after meeting with a client. Looking at her, I say, “what are you grinning about?” To which she wryly remarks, “that customer just told me, ‘please don’t take me the wrong way, but you are a very pretty lady.”

You can be the scum of the earth to someone at 10am in the morning and then a hero just twenty minutes later.

In escrow you meet the most interesting people: From rock stars, to brain surgeons, shakers ‘n movers, CEO’s, farmers, war hero’s, teachers, politicians, pro-athletes and more. And, the occasional world famous writer to boot.

The Value of High Quality Photos for Real Estate Listings

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In previous writings for Rain City Guide on the subject of real estate photography, I’ve emphasized more of a ‘how to’ or ‘how to improve’ approach for Realtor’s who photograph their own listings. I want to shift my emphasis toward raising awareness regarding the value of high quality photography for listings and actually learning to recognize the difference between a bad photographic presentation of a listing and a really good one. Or to put it another way, acknowledging a poor photo presentation when it is and hopefully doing something about it. As a photographer who works almost exclusively with Realtors, I am continuously mystified by the disregard by so many Realtors locally and nationwide who seem to be clueless regarding the photos used to market their listing. To simply purchase a ‘point and shoot’ digital camera and walk around your seller’s home snapping away and expecting a satisfactory result is simply not going to cut it. In most cases there is more to it than that and unless you consider photography a hobby and worth time invested in the necessary skill development, you might be much better off hiring a professional photographer to shoot your listing. Many of the best Realtors do use professional photographers and they’re not fools.

This is a comment from my previous article by a St. Louis Realtor that deserves a more prominent view.

First time poster here: Glad to see some recognition of this problem! The most important thing an agent can do for their sellers today is to get lots of superior images up on the web. Here in St. Louis I am continually astounded at the plethora of dark, awful images, and “what were they thinking” photos of toilets, ceiling fans, etc, or NO PHOTOS at all! How do these [realtors] even get listings?

For most of my listings, I take a lot of my own photos, as I have a background in photography and image correction, so I have hi-res images for color flyers, but I ALSO have a great local photographer who comes in and shoots a batch of wonderful web-ready wideangle shots and virtual tours…

It’s worth the investment (typical agent–“you mean you actually PAY someone to shoot your listings? That costs MONEY!”) My business would be a lot less successful without quality photos.

And this is taken from a follow up email from Shannon. “It would help the profession if we all did better than this, although I’m happy many of my local competitors are still so bad at it! ”

This is really a great article by Norm Fisher, a Saskatoon realtor, with a virtual tour of some of the photos that were taken from the Saskatoon mls. “The Unbelievably Bad Real Estate Photography Hall of Fame”. Click on the links in the article to be taken to the virtual tour page. Norm’s humorous audio narration of the tour are really worth a visit.

A typical comment from a friend who have done an internet search for a home makes comments like, “I sure see a lot of dark, out of focus, awful photos’. Are they hiding something they don’t want me to see?”

I am getting calls from Realtors with listings from low end houses and small condos to spacious multi-million dollar homes. One might think that even a very basic home that is in decent condition deserves to be marketed well. If I’m the seller of a modest home, the sale of my home and the potential price is certainly important to me. I’d like to know that my Realtor is doing a professional job of marketing my home and taking care of the details. Lousy shots do not inspire confidence in the agent and the points a Realtor might earn by producing a good photographic presentation, or in many cases, simply hiring a professional photographer, are going to make it more likely that I’m going to be a happy customer. Happy customers equal referrals. And where are Realtors without referrals?

I’d like to conclude with one of my favorite photos of 2006, taken from a listing near Greenlake. This is one of the most ‘kid friendly, family friendly’ homes I’ve ever seen and it was a delight to see and photograph this whimsical, artsy abode. Doesn’t everyone wish they had swing and a chalkboard wall in their living room when they were kids?

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The Escrow Files: sometimes stuff happens

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[photopress:destroyed_check.JPG,full,centered]
When checks are late to the recipients, escrow tends to sweat. Now we know where this check ended up! Everyone started laughing when we received this 1/6th scale “lost” check in the plastic baggy from the post office. This was shreaded and after a few minutes of taping what we had together and smoothing it out with books, this is what was left!
Note the language on the postal baggy: “We care….we hope this didn’t inconveniece you….” Nah, we enjoy angry customers wondering where their money is. 🙂

The Super Agent

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It seems to me that the agents who post and comment on RCG are ‘mom and pop’ agents whose business is limited to their ability to work with clients directly throughout the real estate transaction. I’ve not heard from any of the ‘Walmart’ agents who have built organizations allowing them no upper limit on their ability to service clients. In fact, many comments and posts have implied that the latter approach is bad for the consumer. Is Walmart bad for the consumer? We all may hate how Walmart shuts down mom and pop stores that can’t compete with the scale and volume pricing of Walmart, but does this have anything to do with the end consumer? Macroeconomically and politically, absolutely; however, consumers have voted with their wallets that the Walmart model makes sense.

When an entrepreneurial agent builds a business, hiring a licensed assistance, then listing specialists, then buying specialists, then a business manager, then a lead manager, why do the lone agents seem to have little respect for the organization they have built? Given the state of the industry today, as others have defined it, where new agents get little training and modeling by experienced agents, wouldn’t such a scaled organization be welcomed? Think of the licensed assistant? It seems to me that by working with an agent so successful and productive, this assistant would be exposed to every type of transaction, and grow up to be a better agent.

To me, it’s the scaled super agent business organization that would be the best place for a new agent to learn the ropes. As many have written here on RCG, the traditional brokerages have little motivation to spend a lot of time growing an individual; however, a good super agent aligns incentives so that the training and modeling he/she provides others within his/her organization contributes to the organization’s bottom line, and such an investment pays off as productivity grows.

Do consumers suffer with these super agent organizations? The mom and pops would claim they do, for in their paradigm, the real estate transaction can only be truly successful if the agent is hands-on throughout. Do the consumers feel slighted, unsatisfied? My guess is no, for the most part. No matter big or small, an agent needs a bedrock of referrals to succeed long term. Clearly, these super agents excel in lead generation and marketing, but a happy client is a happy client, and they’ll refer their friends.

As a new agent, and as an investor, I would love to be in a position where I could lead an organization and model it for success, and get paid handsomely for it. If any super agents are out there reading RCG, I’d love to see your perspective represented here on these pages.