Real Estate Isn't About me

Yep. This is me. Drinking coffee in my sweatshirt. Real life and real real estate.

Real estate agents can get a bad wrap sometimes and, according to one of my CE class instructors, we rank somewhere between used car salespeople and accident attorneys on the “Public Trust” scale. Not exactly the highest of bars to rise to…

I myself have been on the receiving end of that built in distrust when I have tried to educate both buyers and sellers. In truth, it can be more than a little frustrating. Here I am, trying to help you understand how having a buyer’s agent literally doesn’t cost you a cent if the sellers have agreed to pay a buyer’s agent commission… how if you walk into that deal without an agent, chances are the listing agent is likely now taking the entire 6% pool of commission without doing more work… and how if the listing agent doesn’t become a dual agent, you literally are walking into a negotiation with little to no experience, no one to advocate for you, and may have very little concept of the details of the process.

Time and time again, I’m met with skepticism as to why I’d work for free (which I don’t… like I said…the sellers pay me the vast majority of the time), why the listing agent would step in (wouldn’t you double your paycheck if you could?), and how buying a house can’t be that hard, people do it all the time (true… but it can be harder than you think… it’s kind of a big deal…. And my help…. It’s free for you…). And I’m thinking over and over in my head, Why on earth would I lie to you?!

Then it hit me. An epiphany: Because people really have a negative view of our profession. *whoa*

So often we agents get caught up in marketing and touting and being larger than life so that we are the agent whose name everyone knows. Whose face they see on the highway. Whose reputation precedes them and whose past performance is a clear indication of future returns. Maybe other agents buy it and maybe that was the way it was always done, but it feels like the general public is kind of sick of it. And they should be. Because real estate isn’t about me. It’s about the person who is making one of the biggest decisions they will make in their lifetime. It’s up there with which college or maybe no college, to marry or not marry, and have children or not have children. It. Is. Huge.

People seem sick of the persona that so many of us try to portray. Of the “you can’t do this without me” aura that even I have felt rolling off of my industry in waves. In a generation of do it yourselfers, trailblazers, and staunchly independent individuals armed with the internet, many of us agents are desperate to stay relevant. And some of us are desperately desperate - so much so that maybe some are being less than honest or just not giving all of the details. So if I put myself in the public’s shoes, faced with a pretentious, maybe less than trustworthy individual who is telling me what I don’t want to hear - or worse what I didn’t know I didn’t know - how would I react? Well… crap… I’d probably not believe them, either.

The word fiduciary is becoming kind of a buzz word these days, but in its purest sense, that is what real estate agents are (or should be, rather) for their clients. Fiduciaries put the needs and benefits of their clients over all else, including their own. There is no decision made, suggested, advised upon, nor discussed that leads clients down a road where their interests are not paramount. It is really a simple concept, but one that has been bastardized in many industries, including real estate.

So how do we fix it? By remembering who we work for, I think. We work for people. Humans. You. Your mom. My mom. Your family. All walks of life, all financial situations, all life stages. We help people buy and sell HOMES, not houses. We are actually taught to refer to properties we list as “house” or “property” instead of “home”. Because so much emotion is tied to that single word. Think on that for a second. Home. You felt something - good or bad, an image flashed and it pulled you in. That is what we are a part of, right there. That isn’t trying to place importance on us agents that is undeserved; instead that is a perspective that we agents need to adhere to when we are invited to become a part of that process. Invited into one of the most intimate and private places in a person’s life. Their HOME. And we really need to do right by that.