The Truth between what constitutes a real estate team versus the individual agent
“The major real estate companies in Australia spend millions of dollars promoting their brand and spruiking the quality of their teams. But online advertising websites and the industries awards praise and report results from the individual, not the team. A proliferation of companies and websites referring, rating, and promoting individual salespeople has further shifted the real estate industry away from genuine teams to the cult of the individual.
Individualism dominates the real estate industry. Salespeople are taught early in their careers that the secret to success is a high profile. They promote themselves with corny tags lines… put photos on buses and call themselves ‘area experts’. Online portals report and rank the individual by number of sales achieved, while agencies are listing in alphabetical order. Currently there is no online record available for the number of sales made by an agency team, making it difficult to identify the right team, as opposed to an individual, to employ.
What implication does this have for the property seller?
Many agencies promote the size of their sales team. “List your property with us and you will have 30 people selling your home”, they claim. The truth within most of these agencies is quite different.
The rise of the individual salesperson and their promotion online has bought the industry full circle, all the way back to renumeration. Under the traditional commission-based model of pay, the listing agent has no desire to share commission with others. Whenever another salesperson introduces a buyer, the listing agent loses a significant portion of their pay packet. Listing agents are more interested in finding and keeping their own buyers than in buyers introduced by others – even from their own agency.
It’s also standard industry practice to promote an agents personal contact details when advertising a property. This allows the listing agent to introduce a majority of the buyers to a property. There are few other industries where the salesperson can market themselves as the sole individual to sell a product. This would be like Woolworths in Launceston saying they have 95 employees, but you can only buy bacon from Julie Smith.
When selling, there are many benefits to employing an entire team. For example, your property never has a day off. If you listing agent is away, there are other team members with a genuine incentive to get the property sold.
Individuals within a good team compete with each other for the best price, rather then simply racing for the FIRST price. A true team rewards the salesperson who achieves the highest price.
What’s the easiest way to identify a good team? Look for a landline phone number – not a mobile number – on all property marketing.
Quality stable teams are a hallmark of a good real estate company.”
Andrew Trim, REAL ESTATE DANGERS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM, A guide to making Smarter Decisions as a Buyer, Seller and Landlord.
Available at good book stores and online.
Kardinia Property are a local family based, real estate team based in Pakington Street, Geelong ( Newtown end)
A collection of their Google reviews are below…
“Jackson and his wonderful team have done a great job of selling our family home. They were very transparent in their dealings with us and kept us informed all the way through the selling process. My sister and I are very thankful that our friends recommended them to us.”
“Very happy with the team at Kardinia Property. Jackson and Sara were very clear regarding their sales strategy, communicated well and promptly throughout the sales process, and achieved a result that we didn’t think possible. Highly recommend.”
For more reviews simply google, Kardinia Property check out their google reviews.