Let’s recap.
Last week we started taking a look at whether or not the local real estate expert or neighborhood agent still exists in this new technology-driven world of real estate. Today in part two we look at the question, “if there are no neighborhood real estate experts, then why does one agent seem to sell all the homes in your neighborhood?”
Well, you say this realtor or that realtor sells more homes in the neighborhood than anyone else and that’s the value of a neighborhood expert. That’s wrong. The neighborhood expert does not sell more homes in that neighborhood than anyone else, they merely LIST more homes in that neighborhood than anyone else. You see, they are not the agent bringing the buyer. In over 99% of the sales in this city and others, there is usually another agent from another brokerage firm that represents the buyer that purchases your home. That means your agent did not sell your home, the agent bringing the buyer is actually referred to as the selling agent. The real estate industry has specific language as to our roles as the listing agent and the selling agent (sometimes referred to as the agent bringing the buyer). Well, you say then, why do all these people list their home with the same agent in the same neighborhood? Because they falsely believe that the agent they are hiring to list their home also has a pool of buyers for their home. This rarely happens. As I said, 99% of the time the buyer for that home will NOT come from the listing agent, but rather from good marketing and a different agent.
They seem like the neighborhood expert.
Realtors will spend thousands and thousands of dollars marketing a particular neighborhood trying to become the local expert. Their purpose is to try to list as many homes in the neighborhood as possible, thus promoting themselves as the neighborhood expert when in fact there is no such thing. If you really want to know who the neighborhood expert is, I’ll give you the recipe. Query the MLS and look at your particular neighborhood and then see which agent brought the most buyers (NOT listed the most homes). I did this the other day for my neighborhood and many others and you know what I found? I found no pattern at all. I was looking for an agent that might have brought more than two or more buyers to that particular neighborhood in a 12-month period. I thought maybe there was one agent that had sold (brought the buyer) in at least 25% of the transactions, but I could not find anywhere close to that. The best I could find in a 12-month period in one subdivision was one agent that had brought two buyers on two different homes. Is that your neighborhood expert? I think not. Instead, what I found was a huge smattering of different agents representing different buyers from all parts. No one agent cornered the market. In fact, no one agent seems to even be listing 25% of the homes in any one neighborhood or subdivision. The sheer number of different brokers listing different homes in any one neighborhood is greater now than any other time in real estate history. Why? The internet! It’s made it possible to do business anywhere, anytime, for anyone and be in any neighborhood.
We provide value and have a track record to prove it.
The Hawaii Team is NOT your neighborhood expert, we don’t need to be. Our combined 55-year track record proves it. We sell homes from Longmont to Larkspur and everything in between. We sell around 100 homes a year which makes us uniquely qualified to sell your home no matter where you live. Expectational marketing, technology, and a proven system make it so. Don’t believe me…give us 30 minutes and we guarantee you’ll want to work with us.
Dan Polimino is a Broker/Owner with The Hawaii Team, Keller Williams Realty Maui. Contact The Hawaii Team at 808-913-0899, team@thehawaiiteam.com.
All reported sales were not necessarily listed or sold by the broker and are intended only to show trends in the area or shall separately identify the broker’s own sales activity.
