Planning sessions, whether short or long range, are a sop to the membership of organizations, sold to our leaders by facilitators and resold to us by our executive officers because, because… well, we’ve always done it that way. I’m guilty of the exercise on all sides of the equation; specifically I led a British Columbia futurist inquiry in the ʼ90s, where we tried our best to determine a direction for the industry.
The input from licensees, conveyancers and other services within the industry recommended we progress to an education model that featured more practical learning coupled with an apprenticeship or restricted license. They recommended the industry develop a real estate college and mandatory continuing education. On the technology side, seamless access to information by licensees and the public was stressed. Finally, they also concluded the public needed to be educated in the role of the Realtor through a public relations campaign.
Hindsight would indicate we were brilliant because almost 20 years later, most of those “visions” are in play. And yet, part of my insecure ego suggests we would have got there in spite of the study, that the recommendations were received and filed, forgotten, not intentionally, but covered over by the very nature of transition in our governing bodies and the industry itself – turnover.
Fast forward to 2015 and the industry in B.C. is preparing a five-year plan as a result of a project called Journey of Discovery, a fact-finding multiyear inquiry. To quote from the President’s Report, “The research showed we need to help strengthen Realtor professionalism, improve Realtor’s reputations with consumers, enhance consumer experiences with Realtors and encourage innovation.”
Gee! Is it just my tinnitus or is there an echo in here? I’ll grant you the language is more succinct but isn’t this ploughing the same ground? My guess is that 20 years from now we’ll be wringing our hands over the similar results from a futuristic gaze into the same old navel.
And speaking of our reputation with consumers, while my provincial organization was embarking on its Journey of Discovery, guess what the national organization was doing? What a coincidence! In March 2014, CREA released its Great Expectations Tracking Study, conducted by Nanos Research. Forty-eight pages of brilliant graphics capsulated three main findings:
- Perceptions of Realtors are largely positive, except on trust. (Ouch!)
- Realtors are top of mind for about 75 per cent of buyers and 61 per cent of sellers.
- The Internet is the main point of entry for buyers.
Pardon me but – yawn.
The key findings spread a little more data and are generally encouraging, even for FSBO business models. It turns out 9.4 per cent of folks who intend to sell their own home are doing it to save money. Two points: the percentage of private sales is historically a minimum of 10 per cent, and the survey was conducted before CREA launched its award-winning (nyah, nyah Alan Tennant!) SWAT Team TV commercial so results may vary in your neighbourhood.
These results follow patterns established in prior studies in 2003 and 2009 and indicate the “trust rating” lihas declined since those inquiries, where we are now “more trusted than Members of Parliament and used car salespeople but less than most other professions.” Thank God no mention of where Rob Ford is in the standings! Of course people who save our lives, nurse us back to health and extinguish our blazing homes are higher up the food chain than we are. But lawyers and insurance agents? And lawyers only if they are not MPs, obviously.
If we can’t win their hearts and minds in the trust department, or even improve our standing over the past decade, is there any point in studying and inevitably spending more money pursuing this quixotic quest?
Let’s face it – we are in sales and the more you try to put lipstick on that pig, the more it looks like animal cruelty.
Buyers tell us they first look for real estate on the Internet to national websites, dominated by Realtors. But – and like Kim Kardashian’s, it’s a whopper – they also tell us they were first introduced to the property they ultimately bought by the Realtor! That’s the value-added proposition we can take to the bank – the knowledge of the marketplace. Stop worrying about the image.
And we have known that for decades.
My home board, in 2004, conducted a survey of over 2,000 buyers. They were introduced to the property by a Realtor 46 per cent of the time; the Internet (Realtor.ca) 17 per cent and a for sale sign 15 per cent. Print media was mentioned by 6.4 per cent and open houses by 1.4 per cent.
Fast forward 10 years and we have the same top three: a Realtor 32 per cent of the time, the Internet (Realtor.ca) 28 per cent and the for sale sign 11 per cent.
If we add in other Internet sites – national franchises, we know you’re out there – then the percentage grows from 19.5 per cent in 2004 to 34 per cent in the latest study, placing the Internet in first place, the individual Realtor second and the trusty yard sign with its perennial bronze medal. (Newspapers by the way, sank by half to 3.2 per cent, just ahead of the surging open house at 3.1 per cent).
But who put the data on the Internet?
The slimy, untrustworthy Realtor.
Take a bow.
Marty Douglas, irregular REM columnist, is a past chair of the Real Estate Council of B.C. He currently sits as a director of the Vancouver Island Real Estate Board, serves as an advisor to the Real Estate Council of B.C. and is on CREA’s Realtor Code Task Force. He is an associate broker with Re/Max Mid-Island Realty on Vancouver Island, B.C.
