Bundling Agent Services: What Services Do You Want and Need?

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There is no such thing as a free lunch, but lots of people will pretend there is.

It seems to me that many people consider compensation earned by real estate agents as paying some kind of toll. They think of it as admission to the world of MLS, to showings and writing offers. Kind of like a tollbooth on a road somewhere. If there's another place just down the road that offers the same access cheaper, it makes sense to pay your access fee there.

If you think of what an agent or loan officer makes as a toll, just a cost of getting into the arena, it makes sense to go cheap. If you think of it as a payment for knowledge, expertise, service, someone who not only helps you CYA and prevents major mistakes, but makes a positive difference to the result, a different dynamic emerges.

There are existing offices modeled after every level of service from zip on up. It costs them nothing to say "Full service for a discount price," but that doesn't make it true. Like a certain ex-president who "did not have sex with that woman!" you have to consider what definition they're using in making that claim. If sitting in their office with MLS access and a fax machine is "full service" for them, by their lights they are providing "full service for a discount price." Remember how in my loan article Questions You Should Ask Prospective Loan Providers, I listed a whole bunch of questions the intent of which was to nail down how much of the truth they were telling you, and whether they intend to Guarantee their quote, you want to ask prospective agents what services their fees cover. Among other things, this exposes the "full service for a discount price" claim to be yet another Great Lie on the level of "I gave at the office," "The check is in the mail," or "Yes, I'll respect you in the morning."

The bottom-most level is essentially a fax machine and MLS access. I've met some where the fax machine was purely a service that converted email to and from from fax. I've even met some where I suspect they didn't have MLS access and were working off one of the free public real estate sites. They never leave the office; all they are about is access. This level might be good for you if you know as much as a good agent, like say, you were a good agent but lost your renewal application in the mail. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for an experience like my first purchase.

Above that is the level of service that actually help you with paperwork. They still never leave the office, but at least they've got access to WinForms and some kind of checklist for paperwork. They're still not helping you with your investigations or marketing, but at least you might get some kind of more or less complete list of the disclosures you're required to make as a seller, while as a buyer you're going to be quite firmly told to get an inspection. Not that they're going to be there for the inspection, or help you interpret it, or help you figure out if maybe you need something more. They may or may not be aware of a large percentage of traps for the unwary that lie in these documents and the inspection, but at least they help you with the most basic level of CYA.

Assistance in negotiation may or may not become an option at this level. Since the ones at this level never go out and look at property, they can't have any real clue as to its virtues and faults, especially as compared to whatever else has sold in the area in the last few months, but at least they have may have enough of a clue as to general market conditions to keep you from making or accepting the wrong kind of offer. This is the level of the CMA, or comparative market analysis, which takes somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes and about the intelligence of Mongo from Blazing Saddles. At least you shouldn't make an offer or accept an offer that is completely and totally off base for your type of property in your area. The higher up the ladder of service you go and the more involved with the specifics of your market and your property the agent is, the more valuable this service becomes. Top agents that know enough about the property and the "comparables" can potentially negotiate the other side ten to fifteen percent (or more, in a market that favors you) from the numbers that someone using a lesser agent might be stuck with. I know because I've seen it happen - I've made it happen or not happen, and in one case, seen the next buyer pay more than fifty thousand dollars more than the contracted price I negotiated for one buyer who suffered an attack of insanity at closing.

At the next level above paperwork, you've got the agent who may go out and visit the property. For a listing, they're going to measure your property, take some notes for the listing, and maybe give some advice as to how to stage it or put you in touch with a stager. For a buyer, they're more or less willing to open the front door on properties you've told them you want to view. Both sorts will make the effort to sell the property, the listing party more than the door opener. The listing agent's client is only happy when the property sells while most buyers bristle at more than a certain level of sales talk. In both cases, however, they're trying to get that buyer to sign up with them, preferably (from their point of view) with an Exclusive Buyer's Agency Agreement, so the pressure won't be real high in either case. This is also the level at which open houses become something that agents really want to do, in order to snare buyers' business. It is to be noted that there are a lot of agents who think they really are providing as much service as any other agent with this level of service. They aren't. They're still clueless or nearly clueless as to how it compares with everything else on the market in the area, or that was on the market, because they haven't gone and visited any on their own.

Somewhere along about this level of service and above, the agents may actually be willing to get out of the office to meet the inspectors and appraiser. After all, they've now got a negotiated agreement and it's in their interest to further the transaction so that they can get paid. They may also help you interpret what all of these reports say. Not necessarily; but at least it starts being a possibility, rather than pushing all of this off onto the clients or the other agent. This is where a lot of lawsuits start, so many brokerages actually prohibit their agents from being present at inspections - at most they can open the door and leave. I'm not a lawyer, but if I'm presenting myself as being an expert at real estate, not being present for the inspection seems to be evidence of gross negligence, just on the face of it. On the other hand, if the clients are representing themselves as being competent in this area in order to receive discounted service, that's fine with me. I actually make more per hour of my time with less legal liability.

Above this level of service, the services provided by good listing agents and good buyer's agents diverge dramatically. So much so that they cannot even be meaningfully discussed at the same time. Since a listing agent is essentially a marketer while a buyer's agent is charged with analysis and comparison among alternatives, this shouldn't surprise anyone. They are different functions at the heart, and many agents who are very good at one are considerably less proficient at the other. Fact. I can point to great listing agents who are putrid on the buyer's side, and vice versa. Often, it's as simple as attitude. Some listing agents can't stop thinking like listing agents, while some buyer's agents can't stop thinking like buyer's agents, and they are completely different thought processes. It took me a while to learn this, and I can point to a lot of agents whom the evidence indicates have not yet done so.

For the listing agent, the question largely resolves to pricing, plus what degree of staging and precisely how much marketing they are going to do. Note that even the most exhaustive marketing campaign is not likely to get more than the property is worth, but it can mean you get top dollar instead of significantly less, particularly if you price it correctly and have the property ready for the market when it hits the market. Pricing too high to begin with "to see if you can get it," is the mark of an inferior agent "buying" the listing, as you won't be likely to get the higher price and it will almost certainly reduce the final sales price by more than any lucky windfall might be. Particularly in the buyer's market most of the country has right now. These are all obvious things of value - when that agent spends time and money marketing your property, they're spending their own resources, not yours. How to word an advertisement, when to run it, where to run it - all of these are expertise. Go check out how much marketers with far lower sales who don't use their own resources and who draw a salary get paid make in the corporate world before you make a snap judgment as to whether it is or is not worth the money. Here's one example, and keep in mind that this is only a part of what a good listing agent does.

On the buyer's agent side, the question is more singular: How much property scouting are they going to do? Are they going to wait until the client asks to check out a property or are they going to go check out every possibility in the market? Are they going to go out on their own to eliminate definite turkeys before telling you about the cream? Still more important is are they going to tell you about good and bad, reasons why it's good and why it may be deficient, on every property, but that's something you can only observe in action. This is the paramount and unanswerable reason why you shouldn't sign any exclusive buyer's representation agreements unless you are so certain of this agent that your spouse can tear your arm off and beat you to death with it if you're wrong. They need to cover what the property has and what it doesn't, and what it's going to take to bring it up to an acceptable level where it is deficient. Structural flaws, basic amenities, floor plan, lot layout, etcetera, not to mention location location location. Not just now, but for any future sale that you might later decide to make. This whole thing is so time intensive it can't profitably be done on any basis other than the complete combo package of buyer's agent services, and it requires a level of expertise and market knowledge that cannot be acquired on the fly, and aren't cost effective to learn for one transaction. You'd make maybe thirty cents per hour. I might believe fifty or even seventy-five cents per hour in a high cost area like San Diego. However, if you have an agent with this knowledge and the right attitude, there's nothing else that will make nearly so much difference, both in terms of price and in terms of final satisfaction with your purchase.

If you don't want "the full package", that's fine with me and every other agent I know of who's capable of the full package. As I said, we make more per hour with the lesser packages even if we get paid less. But we can also work with a lot more buyers wanting less intensive service, or a lot more sellers, and make more money overall. Furthermore, it's a lot easier for someone who makes a regular habit of doing "the full package" to perform lesser services than it is for someone who doesn't to perform greater. That market knowledge we get from the other clients we have? It doesn't magically disappear because this client isn't paying me to run around scouting properties. Usually I'm working with multiple clients in my area and while one wants the whole nine yards, another doesn't. Just because I'm not scouting for you doesn't mean I'm forgetting about all the stuff I scouted for someone else. But someone who doesn't make a habit of it is working from the same zero base I'd be working from outside San Diego County.

Somebody once asked me about Hourly pay instead of commission for agents. Just as you'd expect, agents can charge less if the client is going to pay an hourly rate for their time regardless of whether there is a transaction. That's called transaction risk, and is a real risk of this business - the chance that, if you're paid on commission, you can spend dozens to hundreds of hours with someone, as well as lots of money, and not make a thing. If the client chooses to bear the transaction risk, that's fine with me, and they'll at least have the opportunity to pay me less for a successful transaction - although they'll still pay the cash if there's not. As I just wrote, that's the risk they are choosing or not choosing to take. Neither agents nor clients can have it both ways. The cash alternative is potentially a lot less expensive, but I haven't met a whole lot of people who like the idea of writing me a check for actual dollars they earned and saved without any certainty of a happy outcome for them. When you get right down to it, most clients do not want to assume transaction risk. But neither agents nor clients can have it both ways.

Some agents have huge lists of what they do, specifying point by point all the services they provide, splitting the services up into the largest number describable to make it seem like more. Others lump them together by more general categories, and may do anything that belongs within the due diligence and responsibilities they agreed to, where the "splitter" figures since it wasn't covered, they aren't doing it. Nonetheless, either way is basically valid. A written representation that they perform specifically named services obligates them to do so, but there is rarely a significant difference between someone who does that and someone who lumps them into more generic categories. I suppose it's all a matter of whether you want someone with a detailed checklist and someone who goes around looking for something they might have missed even though it may not to be on a checklist - but it applies to your transaction.

You may have noticed that I haven't attached any specific numbers to any of this. That's because it's both variable by market and negotiable within a market. The more services you want, the more money the agent will want to make. Ditto with resources, both time and money, you ask them to invest. If you're determined to get the best bargain you can, you need to shop agents and compare their competence and their attitude as well as their price. If you want to negotiate pay with a professional negotiator, well I've got admiration for your chutzpah. Plus I have to admit that it's a fair test of those abilities. Even if those negotiations turn out bad for you, imagine where OJ Simpson would be today if he had a cheap lawyer. Or Britney Spears. Or Bill Gates, the massiveness of whose fortune lies in one legal victory over IBM, as well as his lawyers outlasting the government anti-trust lawyers at a later date.

My service bundle is 100% negotiable, and not being a slave to NAR or the brokerage oligarchy that controls it, I'll fight any effort to change this. My understanding is that any such effort is doomed under California law (at least), but I am not a lawyer and I'll defer to other expertise there if it wants to chime in.

But I do think it reasonable that agents and brokerages be forced to specify what services they do and do not offer, and what they are and are not responsible for in a given transaction, at least by category. Good full service agents do this now. The next dedicated discounter I see who does this will be the first. The very services which are most time consuming and lead to the largest liability are the very ones that dedicated discounters will not fulfill and will do their darnedest to pretend don't exist. But they're also the ones that make the most difference for most clients, and would rank as most important for those clients if they were asked to rank them.

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This page contains a single entry by Dan Melson published on January 4, 2008 7:00 AM.

Time for Listing Agents To Earn Their Money was the previous entry in this blog.

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