Are discount brokers good for the seller?

Are you really doing the right thing for your seller? Had an agent come to me this morning and we had a discussion on a home she just showed that was listed at a deep discount of 1% to the buyer’s agent. This is becoming more and more prevalent in the market today and while most feel it is a problem I feel it is something that will eventually blow up in the discounters face. After investigating the listing I came to a conclusion that the seller is being taken advantage of. You see our agent did the right thing and showed the home, but in the real world most agents would pass on this showing. I know we should show the home, but really why would another agent base their entire business plan on taking advantage of the entire real estate community? This home has already been on the market 180 days longer than any home in the neighborhood that sold in the last 2 years. Keeping in mind it’s a $550,000.00 home, that could be close to $ 30,000.00 in additional payments and taxes the seller has paid. That would be, ugh, 6% and it’s still not sold. Then take into account what negotiations might be like with a seller who is this “intelligent!” It reminds me of the saying;” a fool and his money are soon parted.” Or as W.C. Fields said, “they were lucky to get together in the first place!” Did the agent do the right thing? Clearly no, but when a seller uses a discount broker, they get what they paid for or dare I say deserve. In this case $30,000.00 in loses so far with no end in sight. http://agentrecruit.com http://kwtyler.com

Another great day in California

Another great day in California at Family Reunion, I can’t wait to get home and share the great things that are going to happen in the next year. Our competitors are scrambling to pay large debt burdens on a national level or following an outdated business model while we continue grow and motivate the best agent partners in the world.

I had a great visit with Althea Osborne, just in case you don’t recognize the name, Althea is the #1 profit share recipient at KW for several years in a row and is owner of our region. Althea offered to come to Tyler and teach a profit share class in our new meeting room this summer. I cannot tell you how honored I was to receive this offer on behalf of all of the great KW Tyler agents. Althea knows more about building a great profit share business than anyone.
Right after the conversation with Althea, Mark Willis walked by and told me to tell you guys in Tyler to keep up the great work and keep growing. That totally amazed me, because frankly I thought we kind of just hid out in East Texas. Who would have thought?
Next year the goal is to take 20 KW Tyler family members to Orlando Florida for family reunion. When Claudia and I get back we will met with the ALC and formulate a plan so everyone can go if they want to. We are going to plan early and show up strong.
See everyone soon,
Terry

What a day!

Well its official, eEdge was launched today and it was clearly a great day. Having already gone in and set up the website that comes with it, I can say that so far so good. The set up is amazingly easy and really quite fun. Knowing what this will do for the large volume agents is clear, but let me state with enthusiasm that the agent that is growing their business from the very beginning will benefit even more in my opinion. Good habits will develop right from the outset of their career and it truly has unlimited growth opportunities for all agents.
Mark Willis really put into clear reality the dominance we are having in the Real Estate community by growing thru a shifting market. We are now #2 and very close to being #1 in the United States. The fact that Keller Williams is growing at a sustained pace in a market that has all of our competitors in a free fall is so amazing that it is hard to believe that anyone would want to stay with any of our competitors.
With the tools coming in 2011, KW Tyler and Dallas County will grow beyond our wildest dreams thanks to all of you wonderful superstars.

Terry

E`edge is amazing!

Well Friday was the beginning of the family reunion trip for Keller Williams in California. On the flight out from Dallas I sat next to a young man from Ashville North Carolina who was in on the Beta test for E`edge and “WOW” was it a great experience for me. The E`edge platform is going to simplify an agents life more than I ever realized. It will of course replace our present paperless system in Tyler and Dallas County, but is very simple and easy to use to say the least. Electronic signatures will become the norm and most everything is integrated to pull your contracts and listing info directly to you greensheet. It gives the other agent, even if they are not with KW the opportunity to complete the transaction in the paperless system, or they can just print it. If they print it the KW agent can just scan it back into the system and resume the paperless transaction to completion. Each agent will get another website and email address that will be the collection point for everything from everywhere. Leads, emails, contracts, everything will forward (feed) to one point. They actually had me set up mine today and I was amazed how easy I completed the entire process. It took less than 5 minutes and everything I used to have to go to several places to look at, was right there before my eyes. Every agent will be able to go live on Monday with E`edge and should do so immediately and then just play with the features to see how it will help you.
More to come,
Terry