Saturday, June 12, 2010

Real Estate Teams, What is the consumers benefit?



Absolutely nothing! When you see a real estate team advertised what you are really seeing is a subgroup of agents packaging their listings together to make them look more successful on the marketplace. Usually you will find one or two good agents as the leaders of the team. A productive agent normally gets a better share of the commission from the broker for whom he or she works. What these agents do is the recruit agents that are part time, new or just low performers to the team offering them a higher share of commission on their transactions in exchange for their use of the Team name. The leaders of these teams get an override from these agents. One particular team is advertising that they did 124 transactions last year. As a consumer you might think this is a good number. It is all smoke and mirrors. This team has 18 agents working under the team name. 18 divided by 124 equals less than 7 transactions a piece! If I only did 7 transactions in a year I would be out of business! The other problem with the team is the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing nor does it even care. It is all about money and how many players they can recruit to the group. When you see an Independent Broker like myself I don't have a team to hide behind. I don't have a big company with attorneys who work on my payroll. When you work with me, you get me. I don't have an attorney on my payroll. I have my feet to the fire and can promise you that you will get an honest hard working agent who will do her best so that you refer me to others and use me over and over again like my past customers do now.

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