Is it Realty That Hard?

After a long couple of months of desperately searching for a home you notice the little things that some agents get right, and many get wrong.

So firstly, to any agents that might read this... promptly put all your listings online, use accurate descriptions (don't have to be ridiculously creative), provide plenty of good quality photos, and remember you are dealing with two customers!

Out of the thousands of properties, dozens of agents, inspections and unresponded emails around 4 agents actually asked me where I saw the property. Two agents asked me about my thoughts on the research process and one... just one impressed me.

What did he say?

"The internet is changing the way the industry operates.. It's so easy for people to pass on bad experiences, specially as people do all their research online.

I'm actually working on building my own personal site... I work hard, and have great feedback but no-one has the opportunity to share it. I want people to be able to see for themselves what buyers and sellers think of my service, good and bad."


James Duthie said...

Don't get me started on real estate agents. Second only to politicians in the scumbag stakes.

It's amazing how backwards the real estate industry is, despite being one of the first mega Aussie sites. Having worked with some larger property developers, it's astonishing how much they cling to their old sales techniques, ignoring the changes in consumer behaviour.

In particular, they still withhold information from property listings (price in particular) in the belief that customers will call they're office if they're interested (thereby generating a lead).

Newsflash - it's not 1980 anymore. Information is no longer scarce. The Internet has changed the way people seek info. If you don't provide a detail as important as price, they'll simply move on to look at the other 50 properties in the area.

One property manager I met even went as far to say her competitive advantage was providing full information on directory listings. That ensured she got more walk throughs than any other agent in the region.

Simple huh... give the people what they want...

End rant

nextbrett_au said...

@James cheers for your thoughts,

hehe just read a rant of yours on the topic over at Online Marketing Banter and I agree completely, it's an industry that is steeped in unintelligable traditions but has a massive presence online...

I also think that most agents know they probably won't see you again, so couldn't care less about what you are actually after. Instead, their own financial concerns take priority over customer service.

Unknown said...

I'm with you on this one as well. While is the leader there are so many ways they could make it better - eg. mobile app (I'm not sure, but I like going away from a computer when I look for a house), better user preferences and better use of Google map technology. Credit to them for introducing search by inspection time but there is SO much more that can be done!

Unknown said...
