Recognizing the Paper Tiger
By Hugh Hardy
Today I'd like to discuss some of the different strategies that realtors use in order to solicit listings. Most of the time, we can take a look at these different approaches simply by going to local print advertising. If you do this - and I myself am constantly seeing what other Realtors are doing - you will see a wide variety of solicitations. For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that all these claims regarding levels of sales and levels of service are true - I am not interested in trying to prove that certain claims are false I am more interested in demonstrating how certain pitches used to obtain listings are actually "paper tigers" - they have Iittle usefulness in enhancing the Realtor's ability to sell your home (but they may sound good!)
As an extreme example, let's say that I advertise: "Our office has the finest quality typewriters and photocopiers - to sell your home faster!" Well, there is a pretty sketchy connection between a great typewriter and a shorter market time for your home! This is obviously an irrelevant claim. Unfortunately, in the real world things are much more subtle. It is much more difficult to spot an irrelevant claim. Although it may be difficult for the general public to recognize the relevance of some of these claims, it is my intention to get you to think about this issue and to ask enough questions that you are able to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes time to sell your home.
At this point, it might be useful to discuss a few examples that might be considered as suspect. So here goes... ln a recent column on technology, I discussed technology as it relates to real estate. My basic point was that, at this time, the internet is not a serious source for sales. The MLS (MultipIe Listing Service) is still the most powerful networking tool for selling real estate - by far! So claims about being on the information highway and it's ability to sell homes are, in my opinion, suspect. There is one company that proudly claims in its ads that all it's agents have an e-mail address. This fact may come into play in the future, but now it's a paper tiger. I am not saying this because I don't use the Net - actually, I have both an E-mail address as well as a "home page" on the World Wide Web (this may not mean anything to most people).
Another thing to look carefully at are ads which refer to the "most" or "best". If a company advertises that they are, say, the largest in the world will this help you sell your home? Possibly. But perhaps this means that they have the most "warm bodies" and may, in fact, be surpassed in sales by another company. Perhaps the company that sells the most in your area is a small independent firm. Perhaps it doesn't matter if your agent works for the firm that is "most' or "best". Maybe it does matter. These are all questions that you have to ask yourself - and hear answers from your realtor. In this case, I am not going to say what I think are relevant claims. That's for you to decide - let's just say that I feel that many of the claims of this type don't have any effect on service to the customer.
Some agents are now pushing the fact that they are either members of Realtor networks or that they are connected with networks of Realtors organized and marketed by related businesses (not real estate firms). My experience with networks is that some are very powerful and others have no usefulness at all - except for Realtors to use to solicit listings (the classic paper tiger!). I have participated in five networks over the last few years - and have dropped out of three of them because they were useless entities that seemed to be vehicles for making money for the organizers of the network, as opposed to generating business for the Realtors. My experience is that the networks created by each franchise (e.g . RE/MAX, Century 21, etc) are generally effective - but again, you have to be the judge of each Realtor's claim.
To sum up I would say that anyone has the ability to judge Realtor's claims - provided that the necessary research is done. Question your Realtor - and keep asking "why?" until you have a good picture of what the Realtor's service will do for you.
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