Welcome to Normal

REALTOR.com is out with its market data report and analysis for August and has pronounced that the national real estate market stabilized over the summer selling season and is now nearing normal.

Normal . . . Oh! how we have longed to hear that magical word.  Normal, where an adequate number of homeowners need to sell and an equally adequate number of home buyers want to buy.  Normal, where it takes 45 – 90 days to sell a home and where prices increase in the 3% – 5% a year range.  Normal, where smart marketing works, producing leads.  And Normal, where home sellers are very interested in saving money on real estate commissions.

Getting to Normal wasn’t easy.  We were mired in market sludge as the year began but starting sometime in February, something happened.  Home buyers who had been sitting on the fence for so long they had splinters, started to come back into the market.  By the Spring we had lurched forward to a new kind of craziness, in places reminiscent of the lunacy that preceded the crash:  low to non-existent inventories, multiple offers, over asking price bids, sudden stupid appreciation.

In my own San Diego neighborhood (Hillcrest/Bankers Hill) I remember looking at the MLS one week and seeing 3 active listings.  Three. The next week there were 15 as home sellers, hearing the news that crazy buyers were back in the market and that NOW was the time to sell, raced to get in on the action.  The effect was like pulling the emergency brake on an out of control car.  Everything stopped . . . for a few weeks.

The craziness subsided a bit and we eased into Summer with a little more sanity.

Now we’re into the last months of the year.  In a normal market, this is when ordinary Realtors go into hibernation.  Nothing happens between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, right? Of course, that’s ordinary thinking for ordinary brokers.

But you guys, you Help-U-Sell guys are anything but ordinary, remember?  By their standards you are just plain weird!  So this year, after you get home from Success Summit, do the weird stuff you did last time the market was “normal.”  Market like mad to the end of the year and hit January with a white board full of new listings and a pipeline overflowing with sellers who wanted to wait until after the first of the year.  Because each new listing is an opportunity to market for and get another and another and another, there is no better prep for the Spring Selling Season!

Have a great time at Summit this year, gang.  I will be there in spirit and look forward to hearing about all the great stuff that was shared!

Success Summit Is Next Week!

Dang! I wish I could be there!

If you are a Help-U-Sell family member, I hope you will be.  These events are like a shot of Vitamin B-12:  you come away energized, excited and ready to take on the world!

It is also the place to hear what’s working in today’s market, what’s new, where to invest your time and money.  I am remembering a couple of years ago, Nick Taylor joined us to talk about opportunities for lead generation that exist on Zillow.  A few Help-U-Sell people were already taking advantage of them but many more jumped on board after that meeting and it has produced solid results for everyone.  That’s the kind of business boost you can get from a Help-U-Sell Success Summit.

This year, I know Ron, Robbie and crew have a spectacular program set.  There have been so many great enhancements to the websites recently:  Savings Chart, Testimonials, Market Snapshot and so on . . . but a little bird told me you should be prepared to be knocked off your feet by what you see at the Summit.

If you STILL haven’t made your reservation, let me challenge you.  Go to the Summit (it will probably cost you about a single Set Fee).  Then track your numbers of new listings and sales from the day you get home to the end of the year.  If you don’t get one more listing AND make one more sale than you did in the final 2 months of last year, then . . . I will give you a free phone consultation focused on your business and what you can do to kick it up to the next level.

I’m serious:  you really need to be there. 

 

Why NOW Is The Time To Become A Help-U-Sell Broker

Welcome to 2013, the year the real estate industry stopped staggering and returned to swaggering.  We all knew it would take a recovery in the housing market to initiate a recovery in the overall economy and this is the year the home-buying public decided it was time to make a move.

But what about you?  What’s your next move?

If you are a real estate broker – a savvy one –  you have to be on the lookout for the next trend, the next twist, the next thing that will give you a competitive advantage over others. Up until the late 70s, about the most innovative thing the industry did was create the MLS. But with the advent of the franchises, the real estate business began moving at locomotive speed, with giant competitors looking for new and better ways to grow.  Unfortunately, it has been a one-track itinerary for that locomotive:  recruiting.  The industry so overwhelmingly decided that the way to grow is to add more and more people that today we hardly question why recruiting should be a Broker’s single most important activity, why recruiting is the ‘Lifeblood’ of the real estate business.

Here is a tip about change:  it will the innovators who question what everyone else holds to be true who will ride the next big wave in the real estate industry.

Let’s go back to basics.  Our business is built on the idea that people who want to buy real estate and those who want to sell it need qualified, knowledgeable help.  That’s what the real estate industry is about, our reason to BE.  But notice: nowhere in that statement is there one word about recruiting.  Yet recruiting has become the only acceptable ‘HOW,’ the only strategy for accomplishing the goal of helping consumers.

The message on the Brokers’ internal billboard glows with self-congratulatory phrases about ‘providing an environment where talented people can thrive,’ and ‘serving the community with the most knowledgeable and professional agents in the business.’  But here is the more honest, though somewhat cynical paradigm that underlies that business model:

As a Broker I know that almost anybody with a license can sell a few houses.  Everyone has friends and family who would be willing to give them a shot.  While I am actively seeking super agents, I know that half the people who enter the business will do 4 – 6 deals from their personal network, and quit.  That’s ok:  I’ll take those 4 – 6 deals.  Those agents aren’t costing me much and I can almost cover my overhead on their production.  I also know that 35%-40% of those coming in will stay in the business but will muck along at 6 – 8 deals a year, each personally making $25,000 – $35,000 a year but making $20,000 to $30,000 for me.  20 of those agents and I’m doing ok.  40 and I’m great!  Because I know most people won’t make it, and that many who do will eventually move on to what they perceive as greener pastures, I accept the fact that I must constantly recruit to replace those who leave. My job as a real estate broker is to provide comfortable space and acceptable systems for my agents.

Is that the kind of real estate universe in which you want to live?  Because that’s what’s out there whether it calls itself Keller-Williams, Re/Max, Century 21, or Local Independent Realty.

If, on the other hand, you are ready to shake things up a bit, to return to the business of actively seeking customers – not agents, then you owe it to yourself to take a look at Help-U-Sell.

Step one is to set your prejudices aside.  You have been marketed a picture of Help-U-Sell that keeps you at a distance.   Here are the underpinnings of that false picture:

How can they make any money?  I can barely make it charging full fare and here they come charging half what I do.  What a stupid idea!

They don’t do anything for their sellers, that’s why they charge so little.  You get what you pay for.

Its a pure come-on.  They give away the listing side to get the buyer side and then sell OUR listings for full buyer-side commission.  I think we should automatically cut their buyer side commission when they sell our listings!

Help-U-Sell?  They’re still around?  I thought they went bankrupt.

That’s all just REALTOR-speak.  Don’t let your competitors make up your mind for you.  Do your own investigation.  You’ll discover:

  • Help-U-Sell is not just some discount real estate ‘service.’ It is a completely different way of approaching the real estate business, a different business model.
  • Help-U-Sell fess are lower because the business model is more efficient.
  • Help-U-Sell brokers deliver more dollars to the bottom line charging less than their ordinary competitors who charge much more . . . really!
  • The Help-U-Sell bulls-eye is the consumer.  That’s what we are all about.  We love agents, but they are part of our business model, not the target of it.
  • Help-U-Sell takes the broker out of the role of administrative support for agents and puts him or her back in a role of entrepreneurial leadership.
  • Help-U-Sell is not a do-it-yourself FSBO company but rather offers full-service to consumers that looks very much like the full-service ordinary brokers offer.

If you are attenting the California Association of REALTORS EXPO this week or at the National Association of REALTORS Conference next month, stop by the Help-U-Sell booth.  Talk to our people and discover why this 40 year old twist on the real estate business might be your ‘next big thing.’

 

 

 

 

 

Exotic Dancers, Real Estate Agents and Minimum Wage

Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that a U.S. District Judge ruled that exotic dancers at Rick’s Club in New York are entitled to minimum wage.  The decision came on the heels of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 1,900 dancers whose only compensation had been the tips they received from customers.

The Plaintiffs’ lawyer said the ruling “makes clear that employers cannot pass their statutory duties to pay wages on to their customers and gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace while their employees go without guaranteed or long-term benefits such as Social Security.”

As usually happens when I read a story about exotic dancers (or almost anything else), I thought about the real estate business (!).

You know real estate, don’t you?  It’s that business that thousands of people enter every year when what they really wanted to do doesn’t pan out. They become ‘Independent Contractors’ (which is what Rick’s Club considered its dancers to be) and only get paid when they bring in a commission.  The business model is a little like Avon or Amway or Herbalife where the number of people you recruit is more important to success than the amount of product you sell.  In real estate almost anyone who has a license can go to ‘work’ for almost any broker whether they ever produce or not because, hey, they’re not costing the broker anything, are they?

The end result of this idiotic business model is awful productivity.  The average real estate agent sold fewer than 8 homes in 2012 and made about $34,900 gross (before business expenses).

Can you imagine how quickly the whole industry would turn around if brokers were forced to pay their agents minimum wage?  Massive staff cuts would occur across the board.  Century 21’s sales force would shrink by 70% and all of those people would get letters from the Unemployment Office informing them that as Independent Contractors they are not eligible for benefits.  Keller Williams would have a big company-wide picnic to say goodbye to half of its agents (a picnic because they have such a family-like culture).  Re/Max would shrink to a dozen offices nationwide because there would be no independent contractor agents left to rent desks.

Nothing much would change at Help-U-Sell, though.  Our business model (which, HELLO, is completely different than the rest of the industry), makes it impossible for us to maintain non-productive agents already.  An agent doing industry average production in a Help-U-Sell office is costing the broker a king’s ransom in blown leads and lost business.  So we’re already lean and mean.

Funny thing:  that bit about an agent doing average agent production in a Help-U-Sell office costing the broker a ton of cash?  That’s true in the other guys’ offices too.  It’s just that they don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff.  Like the Herbalife people, they believe their success is dependent on one thing:  how many agents they can stuff into their offices.  Productivity doesn’t matter.  What counts is bodies.

Prior to the downturn, Help-U-Sell had a very carefully conceived salary model in place.  It worked beautifully . . . when the market was somewhat normal.  When the business went off the cliff, however, much of what worked so well stopped functioning.  Almost everyone went into survival mode, abandoned the salary model and cut back on staff.  One notable exception was Patrick Wood, owner/broker of Help-U-Sell Prestige Properties in Chino Hills, CA.  He continues to run his office on a modified salary model and, coincidentally, has ranked in the top 5 of all Help-U-Sell brokers for years.

I have been pretty tongue-in-cheek in this post . . . except for the parts about Help-U-Sell: that was quite serious.  But let’s remember that the IRS has been after the real estate industry for years.  They’d like to see the Independent Contractor status of agents get tossed and it’s only been the flexed muscle of the National Association of REALTORS that’s kept it from happening.  If that kind of change did occur, many real estate brokers would simply shut down.  They couldn’t make their business model work with that additional constraint.  The survivors?  They’d do something the industry has historically NOT done very well:  they’d adapt.  And after a little shake out time, the industry would be better, the consumer would be better served and real estate would start to be an occupation people choose, not just fall back on.

Flashback Friday Monday: Gratitude = GReatATtITUDE

Start your week off right with this little gem from 2010!

I believe that gratitude is the most powerful emotion we have.  I’m calling it an emotion, but it’s probably more a state of mind or a point of view.  I think it’s powerful not only for the way it makes us feel, but also for the affect it has on our environment.  Gratitude when practiced effectively, can actually change the world around us.

Since about 2000, there has been a fair amount of serious interest in the power of gratitude and a number of somewhat scientific studies have been done.  One found that when patrons of a jewelry store were called and thanked for their purchase, they bought on average 170% more in subsequent visits.  The control group – the one that was not called and thanked – showed no increase.  Another study looked at servers in a restaurant who consistently got higher tips when they simply hand-wrote the words, ‘Thank You!’ on the check.

Realtors:  think about that for a moment.  How often are you thanking your former customers and clients?  Do you think doing so might help you do more business?

Real estate is not easy . . . neither is life.  Being able to love your work — and your life — is an art.  It begins with gratitude, which leads to joy.

I’ve had a friend for many years. I almost gave him up as a friend  some years back because he became so negative.  There never seemed to be enough money and all he seemed to be able to focus on was what he didn’t have and what he lacked.  He was absolutely middle class, but was leading an emotionally impoverished life.  Then, shortly after he turned 50, he had a heart attack, a BIG one.  He probably should have died.  But he didn’t and after the bypass surgery was done and healed, he was good as  new . . . except for one thing.   He’d had time to think about what was important and to be grateful for what he had.  For the first time since I’d known him he was truly happy.  What’s really cool is that from that point on, money ceased to be a problem for him.  Oh, he didn’t strike it rich or win the lottery.  I think his income stayed relatively stable.  But his attitude changed and suddenly there was always enough.

See, money loves happy.  Think about it:  if you were money would you be rushing around trying to find your way into the hands of an uptight, unhappy person who would probably squeeze you to death?  I think not.  Money wants to have a good time.  It falls on happy people.  And the road to happy begins with gratitude.

I was at the dentist the other day replacing my temporary crown with the real one.  The temporary crown was the best I’d ever had:  it was comfortable and didn’t come off – not even through Thanksgiving weekend.  When I thanked the assistant who made and installed it, my dentist nearly exploded with praise.  He went on and on about what a great job she did and how happy he was with her work.  Now; my experience with dental assistants is that they come and go.  This one has been there for five years and now I know why.  I doubt she’ll be going away anytime soon.

Try it today:  just thank everyone.  Do it casually, in passing.  And spend a little park bench time thinking about some of the good things that have come your way.  I’ll betcha when you turn the light out tonight you’ll think, ‘Now that was a good day.’

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes about the big G:

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.  ~G.K. Chesterton

What a miserable thing life is:  you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough.  ~Bertolt Brecht

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