While I am snowed (or iced) in tonight--again!--I am thinking once again about how happy I am that real estate is not as time sensitive as some other industries. If you had a restaurant this week, or a theater, or an airline, you would be losing revenue that wouldn't be replaced, in many cases. With real estate, it's different. I was looking at Google Analytics tonight, which tells us how many people look at http://www.hpearce.com/, and from what sites those people reach us, and it was amazing. Every snowstorm for the past month had a huge spike upward, showing us that prospective buyers and sellers are using the downtime we've all experienced when there just isn't anything to do in all this snow, and they are using it to look for real estate on the Web. They can't get out to look at property (we didn't even officially open our offices today, preferring to leave the roads to those who absolutely need to get to work), but they certainly are thinking about it.
That's great news for us. We already know that a bad, snowy winter is usually devoid of sales, but that it is generally followed by a robust spring market. All that searching on the internet, and all that time cooped up inside, leads to a frenzy of springtime real estate activity. If that's the normal pattern, what on earth will we see this spring? Real estate flying off the MLS in April and May, we hope! So, if you are a potential seller, use this indoor time to de-clutter your home and do all those fix-it projects. If you are a potential buyer, keep surfing the net--we'll be waiting for you when the sun shines!
Showing posts with label MLS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MLS. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Independent Contractors
Yesterday I explained to a client that real estate agents are independent contractors. I know that most people realize that real estate agents, and companies, only get paid when someone buys or sells a piece of property. But sometimes I doubt whether they know the full extent of what that means. It means that agents don't get paid for their time. Or their gas. Or the lunch that they might buy you when you spend a long day looking at houses. Or their cell phone. Or their car, car insurance, and repairs. Or their real estate license, continuing education, Board fees, and MLS fees. Or the extra advertising and marketing that they may do on your property (while our firm pays for postage, advertising, and training, many firms charge agents for those services). It's expensive to be a real estate agent, and even more expensive to be a real professional, with all the tools.
Indpendent contractors, who don't get salaries or benefits, deduct their business expenses themselves. In effect, they run their own small businesses. They affiliate with brokers, and use the branding and offices of those brokers, but they don't work set hours. We aren't even allowed to carry worker's comp insurance on them. They assume the costs of working, and, as I often say, they "eat what they kill" in terms of compensation. They get paid for what they do, when it goes well. When it doesn't, they bear the risks.
Why, you may ask, did I decide to blog about this now? The simple answer is that, when I was told by this client that he understood that an agent only got paid when he bought, and that those were the breaks, I'm not sure he really got what he was saying. I guess it gets down to the Golden Rule, as most things do. How much time would you spend doing work for someone and not getting paid, before you felt that it was unfair?
Clients didn't create our compensation system in the real estate industry, and I'm not asking them to be responsible for changing it (although I would certainly love to change it!). I just want them to understand that, if they aren't serious, or they aren't willing to stay with someone until the transaction is completed, then they are really asking for services for free. And the way you treat someone who is doing you a favor may be different than the way you behave if you think it's someone's paid job to help you. It's that simple, and that complicated.
Indpendent contractors, who don't get salaries or benefits, deduct their business expenses themselves. In effect, they run their own small businesses. They affiliate with brokers, and use the branding and offices of those brokers, but they don't work set hours. We aren't even allowed to carry worker's comp insurance on them. They assume the costs of working, and, as I often say, they "eat what they kill" in terms of compensation. They get paid for what they do, when it goes well. When it doesn't, they bear the risks.
Why, you may ask, did I decide to blog about this now? The simple answer is that, when I was told by this client that he understood that an agent only got paid when he bought, and that those were the breaks, I'm not sure he really got what he was saying. I guess it gets down to the Golden Rule, as most things do. How much time would you spend doing work for someone and not getting paid, before you felt that it was unfair?
Clients didn't create our compensation system in the real estate industry, and I'm not asking them to be responsible for changing it (although I would certainly love to change it!). I just want them to understand that, if they aren't serious, or they aren't willing to stay with someone until the transaction is completed, then they are really asking for services for free. And the way you treat someone who is doing you a favor may be different than the way you behave if you think it's someone's paid job to help you. It's that simple, and that complicated.
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