Grand Rapids real estate agents have become order takers, not real estate agents…time for communication.
May 16, 2012In today’s real estate world, the job of a Grand Rapids real estate agent has become much easier with the evolution of the internet. Whether you are a Grand Rapids real estate buyer or a Grand Rapids real estate seller, the amount of information that is available to the public consumer is endless.
If you are a seller, you can visit numerous major real estate websites and punch in your address and in minutes they will give you their estimate of your homes value. In my opinion, those are not very accurate, but it at least gives them a neighborhood guess of value.
If you are a buyer, again, there are many national and regional and personal websites available for people to do their own real estate searches and find homes that fit their criteria without any agents help at all. And that’s where my story starts.
How many of us Grand Rapids real estate agents pick out homes for our buyers to see? Not many I would guess. But, having said that, it is time to get more involved in what you are going to see with your clients. Too many times, I get a phone call from a buyer and they say they have a list of 14-18 homes that they would like to see on a given Saturday. In the past, I would say, ok, I’ll set them up. No longer. We need to start asking questions. Does this really fit your criteria? Is this home is a neighborhood, because you told me you wanted a neighborhood with lots of kids? Is it too far out of the city? This home has all of the bedrooms upstairs; you said you wanted a main floor master bedroom. Do you see where I am going with this?
Now comes the more frustrating part of this discussion. When I get a call to show one of my listings, of course set up the showing as requested. Then, after the showing period has ended, wait to hear from the agent, who doesn’t call, doesn’t email, or even leave a business card, have to hound the agent for feedback. Then, finally, when I do get feedback, I get an answer that frustrates me. They say things like, “ It was on a busy street, it was too far out, the home was not in a neighborhood.” All of those things are very apparent to the seller, and should be apparent to the agent showing the houses that day, but he or she didn’t ask any questions when given the list of homes to look by the buyer. The sellers spend a lot of time getting homes ready for showings and then leaving for the showing period, to come home to no business card and useless feedback, if at all.
Grand Rapids real estate agents….it’s time to better communicate with our buyers, our sellers and most of all, our fellow Grand Rapids real estate agents.