This message appeared atop my search results page on Realtor.com. I had wanted to see what was on the market in my area of Oakland. Homes here go for anywhere from $750,000 to $1,500,000. It’s a market with several upscale boutique brokerages and a few national brands, some of which are positioned as high-end.
And yet, this. After twelve years of online home listings. After study after study and speech after speech exhorting Realtors to produce multiple photos for their listings. In a buyers market where every little thing counts to move a home. Amidst a maelstrom of consumer skepticism about Realtor value.
Unbelievable.
There are a few things that should happen here:
- 131 sellers whose homes are poorly marketed should fire their agent immediately and contact one of the 61 that do have multiple photos or tours on their listings. How can 6% ever be credibly defended when this sort of incompetence prevails?
- The brokerage houses whose brands adorn these single-photo listings should simply pack it in because they fail – even as their financials bleed red — to require their agents to execute on the most basic tasks of merchandising their listings.
- The 131 agents or brokers who did not add more than one photo should be forever barred from complaining about the online innovators who have picked up the opportunities the traditional industry has been leaving on the table for the past ten years.
What a downer. I get tired of seeing failures like this. I want to talk about – to celebrate – the successes our industry marks as it wakes from its boom market dream and meets new challenges with courage and innovation. But for every one of these gains, I’m slapped with ten blunt edged realities like this.
I hope the shakeout comes soon. I hope the legions of part-timers and opportunists exit the business quickly. I hope more brokers muster the courage to cut loose the friends and family agents who bring them two deals a year and fat splits, but poison the well for their brand and all the practitioners who get it.
This industry can’t sustain this level of incompetence much longer.
Is there a silver lining here? Yes, but it’s not grasped easily. It will take work. But the fact that things are so bad does present a big opportunity for a new or existing brokerage willing to do things differently.
Like enforcing some basic standards:
- A minimum of 12 photos on every listing, with a minimum of two for each room
- A professionally produced short video on every listing
- Online and local newspaper advertising for every listing highlighting these features, not the agent
- Professional merchandising and staging counsel from an in-house designer
- Syndication of every listing to every significant home or classifieds site, industry politics be damned
I can envision the ad campaign in my local paper promoting this. "Oakland Hills homeowners, here is our promise to you" … a real promise. One that is met. That differentiates. That elevates the firm willing to do this above the mire of debility that curses this noble industry.
- Brian Boero
Local, Mobile, Social and the future of real estate
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Ditto!
Brian,
Usually when I read your post I just say 'Amen" when I'm done. Yet on this post You are so close yet so far. The fact that there are not multiple pictures does not mean it is a fundamental failure by the agent. I think you need to look at the source. Realtor.com is notoriously expensive and has very little return. There is nothing that makes a buyer stay there (stickiness). As a buyer you have to wade through pages of propaganda to get to what you want.
I personally have at least 12 photos on all my listings. I do NOT subscribe to Realtor.com anymore. My money is much better spent at vflyer and the like. I use property specific domains. I blog. All of it is much more dollar productive then subscribing to Realtor.com.
The problem with your premise of having multiple pics for each room is room size. In Colorado some of our homes are small. Some of the bedrooms are only 10×9. On a vacant house with the best wide-angle lens what will you see. A wall? A window? Another wall? Not much. One shot from the door usually captures all there is to see.
As far as newspaper advertising goes the only time it is mildly effective is when you are having an open house. The local paper here is incredibly expensive for no return (yes I track all incoming leads and know where my sign calls and business comes from). Thanks for making us think with post and look forward to what others have to say.
Hey Brian,
Thanks for raising the bar again. I get what you say and will push my agents to also listen. Great stuff!
At least you have 68 agents that "get it". My neighborhood only has 20 out of the 194 listings.
Like "Carey", I don't use Realtor.com either. Our MLS only allows SIX (!) photos, yet a frightening number of listings have less than that — many only have the one "drive by" shot the MLS provides. Some, as difficult as it is to believe — have none.
Recently C21 announced they wouldn't accept listing to C21.com unless they had — 3 — pictures. And as incomprehensible as it is, I heard agents whine about that!
The only thing I disagree with in your post (completely) is local newsprint advertising. It is virtually ineffective, and the cost is outrageous — leading to a horrific ROI.
"I hope the shakeout comes soon."
Don't hold your breath Brian…
Some agents can't find the cable to connect their digital camera to their computer. Hey, neither can I, which is why I recommend spending $10-$20 for a USB card reader and leaving it connected to your home office computer.
Brokers might want to have one or two in the office as well. The newer models work with a dozen or more different types of flash memory, so one device could support everyone in the office, even if they use different digital cameras.
There is still a bit of a learning curve to download and then upload the photos, but the main obstacle in my experience is not being able to find the cable that came with the digital camera.
Carey is right. The reality is that if Realtor.com served the best interests of Realtors and consumers, it would allow a large number of pictures on each listing without any extra cost. This should be an absolute bottom line requirement placed upon Move. Meanwhile, when you type in almost any keyword for my area into Google, you will see my ad beside one from both Realtor.com and Move.com. The very websites designed to support and compliment mine have become my competitors. I think this is why we see a lot of animosity from Realtors for Realtor.com and Move.com.
Funny stuff. Should I guess how many of those 68 listings with multiple photos had a video?
Realtor.com is irrelevant in our market and it doesn't make any sense to pay to add multiple photos to a website that has only a small fraction of our markets listings (our MLS does not send ANY listings to Realtor.com, therefore it has a very small market share in our area. The only listings Realtor.com has here are from those brokers who have set up an individual feed.)
I will occasionally add photos to other sites that allow me to do so for free, but I'm really doing this for the Sellers, as I doubt serious buyers are looking in all these random sites scattered around the internet.
My goal is to make my own site the "go-to" site for Seattle real estate, and giving free content to other sites to build them up is not important to me.
Regarding the politics of Realtor.com … I am definitely aware of the charges/upsells that attend to multiple photos. But that is inside baseball. From the consumer's perspective, all that matters is their home is showing up on the #1 real estate website (Seattle being an exception) with just one photo. If I'm a seller, I don't care what it costs. It's still inexcusable.
Brian Boero
And of course Realtor.com wouldn't be the #1 real estate site without all those listings in the first place.
This is the problem with many aggregators. They have nothing of value without the participation of brokers and agents, yet they turn around and attempt to stick it to the brokers and agents who are creating their value.
Where would social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, which have no value without their members, be if they upsold basic features? Out of business, most likely, since polls indicate that charging a mere $2 per month would drive off most of their membership.
Where would YouTube be if they upsold video posting? They wouldn't be worth two cents.
You're arguing that pictures are a basic requirement of doing business. If you believe that, how do you justify "upselling" a basic requirement?
Agents and brokers should stop listing with any business that doesn't provide basic requirements for free because without those listings, the value of that business would be zero.
I am not suggesting a boycott. However, if even half of the other 49 states and/or 100's of MLS's decided to discontinue sending their feed to Realtor.com, and instead spent that money on making their own company website better, on SEO, branding and marketing, Realtor.com would not be the 800lb gorilla it is today and each of those companies would benefit and not be dependent on the whim of a corporate conglomerate.
When I first read Brian's post, I had no idea realtor.com charged money to post photos. Our local MLS offers 9 free photos for each listing.
We still don't see 100% usage of that free feature, but in my experience that goes back to misplacing the USB cable for the camera.
THIS POST STRUCK A CHORD WITH ME, so I must chime in with a different viewpoint.
Brian comments in his post about pictures and how agents are so bad because they don't have millions of them… hmmm.. there could be a reason for that. Let's discuss this theory.
Brian states:
>>>Regarding the politics of Realtor.com … I am definitely aware of the charges/upsells that attend to multiple photos. But that is inside baseball. From the consumer's perspective, all that matters is their home is showing up on the #1 real estate website (Seattle being an exception) with just one photo. If I'm a seller, I don't care what it costs. It's still inexcusable.
Brian Boero
Brian, Would you think it was inexcusable if YOU had to run a business and look at ROI?
I'll bet that you wouldn't think it "inexcusable" if you were the one fronting thousands of dollars and time to market an over-priced listing that you would only get compensated for IF IT SOLD.
On another note, not that I'm fond of how NAR has sold agents a bill of goods with Realtor.com, I must say that I have used them in the past, and yes I got good response… so with the market being so bad in the #3 state for foreclosures, I thought, let's try this again.
NOT that I like being held hostage – but hey, after almost 30 yrs in the businsess, sometimes you have to 'suck it up' and do what it takes … it doesn't make me feel any better though, but I work hard for my committed clients.
I dropped Realtor.com for awhile, because the market was HOT, didn't need them, but now it's a different story, so I decided to use them again. GUESS WHAT??
I've called…
I've called again, and again, and again…
I've emailed, again, and again and again…AND NO Response! I can only surmise they have more business and money than they can handle.
The bottom line I'm trying to make a point on is this:
I would surmise that IF it was YOUR money you were fronting to market a property, and the seller is beating you up on commissions, talking to 5 agents who all offer to charge less, but DO more, AND being unrealistic about pricing – then I think your opinion might change just a little bit.
Walk a mile in our shoes… then come back and do a post about how REALTORS don't have enough pictures, (yeah, I'm going to spend my time taking tons of pics, import them into my pc, post them to the MLS and millions of other sites, Do a virtual tour, DO A video tour, post those to millions of sites, blogs, and my SOI. etc. with a seller who wants 30% over comps price in a market that is down, and average DOM are 6 months – AND doesn't want to pay me for my TIME OR expertise?!)
It's time we all got on the same page and worked together. It is not a simple matter of the highest price -lowest commission. It is the money in the clients pocket, the ROI for the agent, that is what makes the difference.
If you have a $2500 mtg pmt, your principal payoff is probable $20 bucks, so every month it takes you to sell your house – you will lose almost $2500. and you want to beat me up on money?
Even if I lowered my commission by 1 or 2% that is relativly small as opposed to the extra Days on the market you are going to waste $2500 for, yet you will sit there, wasting your time and complain that you don't have 20 pictures on Realtor.com?
To be honest, if someone overprices and wants to beat me up on fee's, forget how many pictures you have… you won't sell your house because you try to tell us how to do our job and beat us up on the fee so we can't offer a decent buyer agent compensation.
The problem is not how many pictures, it's being informed, educated and pricing.
Now granted – true real estate professionals should have a heart to heart talk with clients as to reality and turn down business that is not going to make a profit and not meet the clients expectations, BUT, it is not a one sided "agents are the bad guys" thing as you have posted.
I would think you should at least get opinions from both sides of the fenced prior to demeaning an entire population. Contrary to popular belief – it is NOT always the agent who is the problem.
THIS is a business and agents need to treat it as such. If a seller is motivated, realistic and logical, I will pull out all stops to do whatever it takes to help them move.
If they want to tell me how to do my job, over-price, and beat me up on the money I am going to front to market their house – they can go waste somebody else's time or use my consulting services which would require them to front the money for a portion of the marketing.
It's amazing what happens when they have to front money for an over-priced house, and they want lots of open houses and print ads. When they have to front the money they get real concerned.
I've done this for a living for almost 30 yrs.
I pay my bills, my mtg pmt, I have a child to send through college, and I have not yet applied for my 'not for profit' paperwork, nor will I.
Real Estate IS A BUSINESS, not a charity, and we all need to get on the same page. The consumer needs to understand the risk vs reward factor. They can't offer to pay us zero, yet complain that we aren't giving Realtor.com thousands of dollars to put them on their site. Nor can they expect video's and expensive virtual tours, or my time 24/7/365.
I love real being a professional real estate consultant because I can offer choices. You can pay me a retainer upfront, do some of the marketing on your own, and I'll take less on the back end. Not a lot of takers on that one with an overpriced listing.
Now – would you like 12 pictures, a video AND postings to millions of blogs and web sites to go with this rant
? If so, let me fax you my consulting agreement so I get paid for my time rather than wasting it…