On Being a Real Estate Agent Archives - Page 2 of 9

New Lock Boxes Prove That Size Does Matter

July 25, 2015 By Nick Bastian

As we have mentioned before, REALTORS in Phoenix will soon be using a new type of lock box.

Last week, ARMLS began to send out our appointment times for us to switch out our old boxes for the new ones. The exchange will be 1 for 1 and should be fairly simple. Well, it will be simple as long as agents are diligent in updating the boxes quickly, and they make sure to identify which type of box is on which property during the transition. I hope all of our REALTOR friends will PLEASE make sure to pay attention and try to make this a painless process!

While the transition process can be a bit tricky, the new boxes really do seem a lot better. I had a chance to see the new Supra boxes this past week, and I think they are greatly improved.

Size Matters!

The photos below show what the new boxes look like. Click either one to enlarge the photo. For the most part, the new Supra boxes look like the ones we are currently using until you put them side by side.

ARMLS lock box exchange — LARGER Key Holders!

One of the biggest advantages to the new boxes is the fact that the key holders are much larger and are designed not to jam up if someone puts more than one key inside on a key ring. The key holders are now large enough to hold more keys, and they will accommodate a gate card or fob that we often deal with in some of the condominium complexes and gated communities around town.

While the size of the new lock box is much better, we all know that size in not the only thing to focus on. Effective use of the device is something else we look for, right? Right. Thankfully, the new lock boxes do not disappoint. The technology is much better than in the old boxes! I watched a demonstration of the new bluetooth technology that is built into the boxes, and it worked flawlessly with no need to even point the phone at the box. No more fobs needed, no more eKey to forget, or to remember that it needs to be charged before getting to a property. All you do is install the app and put in your code when you are at the property. The box will sense your bluetooth device, and you just touch the bottom of the box to remove the keys.

Yes, we have come a long way since the very first lock boxes I remember using. They had a sweet metal key that you put in to the side of the box. There was a tiny key holder and they were not exactly what we would call “smart” technology by today’s standards.

Agents, you were sent an email from ARMLS that tells you when you can exchange your lock boxes. Most of us will exchange our lock boxes at the Mesa Convention Center, 263 North Center Street, Mesa, AZ 85201. Make sure you attend, or send someone to attend for you. You can use their exchange authorization form if needed.

Bonus tip: You might want to wait about a month before switching to the cool new bluetooth account. This will help ensure that you can get into all boxes during the transition, as the current ekey or fob will open both types of lockboxes, but the old boxes won’t open via bluetooth. The invoice for your lock box key access will be issued about a month after we make the switch, and it should make for an easier proration and transition.

I believe they said that the new bluetooth technology will be more affordable, too!

Op-Ed: The Realtor Party. NAR Proposes the REALTOR® Party Political Survival Initiative

March 22, 2011 By Jay Thompson

Fair warning, opinionated rant to follow”¦

At the Realtor Association Executives Institute (AEI) conference that just concluded, the National Association of Realtors announced a new initiative ”“ The REALTOR® Party Political Survival Initiative (hereafter referred to as the RPPSI).

Rob Hahn did a great job dissecting this plan in his article, BREAKING: NAR Launches a Political Party, Risks Its Future. Every Realtor out there would be well advised to read Rob’s post.

In a nutshell, the RPPSI will (if it passes the NAR Board of Directors vote at the Midyear Legislative Meetings in May ”“ and I suspect it will) require every Realtor to pay an additional $40/year as a “dedicated dues increase”. This money “would be used exclusively to fund political advocacy efforts”.

From one page on Realtor.org (you have to be a logged in member to view the entire page):

In March 2011, NAR launched the REALTOR® Party Political Survival Initiative. The initiative will keep the REALTOR® organization among the most influential advocacy groups in America.

The initiative proposes a dedicated dues increase of $40. The proposal will be taken up by the NAR Board of Directors at the Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo in May.

Because the dues increase is “dedicated” to this initiative, it would be used exclusively to fund political advocacy efforts. If it is approved, more than 50% of the NAR budget would be devoted to political advocacy, which consistently ranks among members as the No. 1 benefit they receive from NAR. Two-thirds of the dollars raised will be returned back to state boards to be used in support of local candidates, issue campaigns, and other political advocacy efforts.

My take

My initial gut-instinct reaction to this proposal was that it is a “mandatory RPAC fee”. RPAC = Realtors Political Action Committee, and donations to RPAC have always been voluntary, albeit strongly encouraged by NAR and local and state association leadership.

I have never voluntarily donated to RPAC. I emphasize “voluntarily” because it was just a couple of weeks ago when someone approached me at a networking event at the Arizona Association of Realtors Winter Conference and said, “Hey Jay, I need five bucks!” Assuming they were headed to the bar, I gladly handed over a fiver. I was dismayed to see Mr. Lincoln shoved into the RPAC donation jar. I actually asked for it back and was met with laughter. Rather that cause a stink at a social event, I chose to let it go.

Let me make this perfectly clear ”“ I have no problem what-so-ever with anyone that choses to donate to RPAC (or any other political action committee. Or political party. Or candidate running for office). People are free to voluntarily donate to whatever their hearts desire. RPAC has done some good work, but like any PAC, some of what they support is questionable ”“ to me.

For me, who I chose to vote for encompasses FAR more than where a candidate stands on issues that might affect my profession, or housing policy, or any of the other things the NAR shall deem important or relevant. Sure, those things are taken into consideration, but there are many other factors that I consider before I pull the lever in the voting booth. (Pulls a lever in a voting booth? How old is this guy?)

My issue is with my trade association forcing me to provide money to political candidates and policies that I may not agree with.

And when this initiative passes, the NAR will be doing exactly that ”“ taking my money and giving it to candidates for political office. Candidates who I may ”“ or may not ”“ support and vote for.

Who gets my political money should be my choice, not the choice of the NAR, or some local or state Realtor association.

Let me make something else perfectly clear. I am not “anti-NAR”. I think the NAR does many things well. I also think they are lacking in some areas (chiefly in helping Realtors understand their industry and improve their business, and in improving the deplorable public perception of Realtors). There is no question in my mind that the NAR staff is made up of good people. I’ve met many of them and am proud to call many NAR staffer’s my friend. They want to “do right” by their membership.

In fact, I dedicate a lot of my personal time and somewhat significant personal expense to try and affect change within the NAR as well as local and state associations. I sit on numerous local, state and national committees, and I attend both the NAR Midyear Legislative and Annual Conferences, all on my own dime. I do this willingly because I strongly feel that to affect change in the behemoth bureaucracies these trade associations are, that one must “go inside” to be most effective.

This “Realtor Party” however, annoys me beyond belief.

Why this initiative will pass

The NAR, in my opinion, blew it in rolling out this initiative. They released the news at AEI ”“ a conference very few practicing Realtors attend. Why were association executives the first to hear about this proposed fundamental shift in the purpose of the NAR? Shouldn’t the MEMBERS have heard it first? You know, the ones about to get a 50% increase in their dues?

Why? Maybe because it’s the associations that need to sell this plan to their members.

Now the NAR, and the Associations, have a mere two months to spread the word amongst the membership before the change is voted on by the Board of Directors at Midyear ”“ another conference that isn’t attended by many members. If the NAR is “working for America’s property owners” then why is so much of the material about this initiative shoved behind the Realtor only wall of Realtor.org?

It almost seems like they are trying to sneak this whole thing past us. And the public at large.

My guess is there are a whole bunch of Realtors that won’t know anything about this increase in dues ”“ and more importantly a fundamental shift in the purpose of the NAR ”“ until they get their 2012 dues invoice. I’m sure the NAR and local and state associations will attempt to get the word out. But those attempts will be contingent on agents opening their email, snail mail or whatever method the associations chose to help spread the word. And reading that information. And giving a crap. And expressing their opinion before the BoD votes in May.

My guess is there are a whole bunch of Realtors that have no idea who from their state sits on the NAR Board of Directors ”“ the body that will be voting on this change in less than two months. Do you know your directors? There are 31 just in the state of Arizona (there are 110 in California by my count). You can find your directors here (log in required). You’re on your own to figure out their email addresses / phone numbers should you wish to contact them and provide your opinion on this matter.

Maybe I am completely off base

It’s not the $40 a year (well, $80 for us as the wife is also a Realtor) that bothers me. It’s the principle of the thing. I’m a big boy, I can decide who, if anyone, gets my political donations. In Rob’s article, he says the NAR could well lose a lot of members over this. I’m not so sure. I think there are many agents such as myself that are basically forced to join the NAR because their local association owns all or part of the Multiple Listing Service. If I want MLS access, I have to join these associations. The NAR could raise my dues to $1,000 a year, label it and spend it however they like, and I’d still have to pay them and be a member. Nothing like a captive audience”¦

It’s not a stretch, at all, to think of what the NAR is doing as the same thing any other labor union does. “You want to work here, you pay us whatever we dictate and we’ll do whatever we like with your money”.

I don’t have a choice. If this initiative passes, I’ll pay the extra money, and the NAR will send it to the candidates they deem fit and to push policies they deem will benefit… home owners? Real estate agents? State and local associations? Themselves?

And it matters not one iota whether or not I deem them fit.

A better solution?

Sorry, I don’t have one. I don’t pretend to know all the answers. I do know what doesn’t sit well with me, and this initiative clearly qualifies as such. Someone will either publicly or privately chastise me for whining and not offering a solution. Oh well, so be it. Perhaps the NAR could beef up education on what RPAC is and does ”“ explain clearly how they benefit me as a Realtor. Maybe they could just pump up the groveling for voluntary contributions to RPAC. Spin up the already existing guilt trip placed on committee members who don’t donate. I suspect that was all considered and it was decided from on-high that it wasn’t enough. The easy solution seems to be to just jack up the mandatory fees. Bitching and moaning will commence from some, but most will just pay up, put up, and get over it.

If you are a Realtor, here’s the bottom line:

This initiative will be voted on by the NAR Board of Directors at Midyear in May. If you feel strongly about this ”“ either for or against it ”“ you should let your Directors know. That’s not easy to do because inexplicably, there is nowhere (at least that I can find) on Realtor.org where you can get communication info for your state’s Directors. Names yes, but it’s going to take effort and research on your part to actually communicate with your Directors. Your other option is to fly to D.C. and speak at an open forum that will (I assume) be held regarding these matters. Unfortunately that costs money and may be too late anyway ”“ most Director’s will probably have made up their minds on how they are going to vote long before that.

I’ll be emailing all my Directors with my thoughts (that will be more concise than this War and Peace length blog post). What you do is up to you.

Don’t think this is a fundamental shift in the NAR’s goals and purpose?

I’ll leave you with this…
From the National Association of REALTORS® Fact Sheet, on why the NAR exists:

Why: Working for America’s property owners, the National Association provides a facility for professional development, research and exchange of information among its members and to the public and government for the purpose of preserving the free enterprise system and the right to own real property.

Yeah, someone is going to need to craft a whole lot of new language surrounding the purpose of the NAR once they start devoting more than 50% of their budget to “political advocacy”.

As always, your thoughts and opinions are welcome in the comments below”¦.

Bizarre Real Estate Practices #873 (and #874)

August 10, 2009 By Jay Thompson

From the annual Harris Interactive Poll on prestigious occupations comes this shocker:

Lookee who is sitting firmly at the bottom of the list.

And this is nothing new. Harris added real estate agent / broker to their poll in 2003 and we’ve been at the bottom every year with the exception of 2005 when we were just (barely) above stock brokers.

Oy.

Why might this be? Why does John Q. Public have such a lowly opinion of the real estate agent?

Could it be the absurdly low entry “barrier”? Let’s face it, all it takes is some butt-time in “real estate school” and an ample checking account balance to get a real estate sales license. If you are 18 and take 90 hours of “education” you can have a real estate license in as little as nine days. Heck, in Arizona, you don’t even need to complete any high school to get a real estate license. Contrast this to getting certified as a nail technologist. For that you need almost 6 times as much education and 2 years of high school.

Or maybe it just boils down to the silly things some real estate agents do.

Things like setting up email auto-responders that say, “For Monday, August 10th I will be checking emails from 9-10 am and 2-3 pm”. Or worse, follow the advice of some real estate sales guru’s who will instruct you to only answer email for 30 minutes in the afternoon. This is done so you “appear busy” to some nameless “lead”.

What a crock of poo.

Or maybe it’s blog post titles like, “Suck Highly Targeted Leads In Like A Shop Vac”. This article contains such nuggets as:

Watch this video it’s got all the gory details on how you can use it to get a ton of new leads in your sales funnel. You’ll need a towel to mop up the drool you’re going to have all over your keyboard when you get a load of this 🙂

Doesn’t this make us sound oh-so-intelligent?

To be fair, this didn’t come from a real estate agent. It’s from a “real estate internet marketing strategist” that I suspect is wildly successful because agents tend to throw money at anything that has a glimmer of hope for landing the ever-elusive sales commission.

I just finished spending a week in San Francisco at three separate real estate conference-like events. It was full of some brilliant people. I’m talking very intelligent, thinking WAY outside the box, leading edge thinker type folks. I know our industry is full of this kind of person.

Problem is, it’s often full of something else.

Hat tip to the ever brilliant Jonathan Miller for the Harris poll chart/link.

The Perils of a Part Time Agent

June 14, 2009 By Jay Thompson

Above is an actual notification we received yesterday (contact info redacted and emphasis mine).

This post isn’t a rant about part-time real estate agents. Let’s face it, the Phoenix real estate market ”“ along with much of the country ”“ has been pretty rough of late. Many agents have left the business altogether. Others have picked up part-time jobs. And there is nothing ever wrong with having multiple income streams (heck, I do).

I know some brilliant agents that have second jobs. Those that handle it well have plans and systems to cover for them when they are not available for real estate. Maybe it’s a partner or team member. Maybe they are selective about the clients they take on, or the areas they work. Those that handle it well place real estate first, and their other job second.

But when the real estate sales job takes a distant second, when you can only help someone in the evenings ”“ and apparently not on a Sunday ”“ when you have no plan to have your client covered 24 x 7, then it is the client that suffers.

The person that sent in this showing request assumed this was our listing. It happens all the time. Someone searches for homes on one of our sites and doesn’t realize that we display all the homes available for sale, not just homes we have listed. Had this been one of our listings, of course we would have arranged to show it. But it’s not, and this person is already working with an agent so we can’t show it.

(And for the record, we would not expect someone in an existing agency relationship to give that up if we were to show one of our listings. In fact, I don’t like to serve as a “dual agent” ”“ representing both the buyer and seller in the same transaction ”“ so I’d encourage this person to work with their agent. There are however, some listing agents that would try to undercut the buyer’s agent. Believe me, it happens all the time.)

Here we have a home buyer that is obviously very flexible, and is interested in a $180,000 home. An ideal client by any definition. Yet they are searching for homes on a site that doesn’t belong to their own agent, and they are reaching out to what they think is the listing agent, trying to view a home they are interested in. They are setting up their own showing appointments.

What is their agent doing?

Working some other job I guess. It’s plainly evident that the agent they are using doesn’t have a home search enabled web site, nor have they instructed their client on the potential issues of dealing directly with the listing agent. It looks safe to assume the agent has not set their client up on a dedicated “client portal” that the MLS provides.

It makes one wonder what else they aren’t doing for their client.

How many potential homes is this buyer going to miss out on because their agent isn’t available? What happens when this buyer calls a listing agent that has no problem “stealing” them from their current agent? How is this evenings-only agent going to be present during the day for an inspection? How are they going to be at the title company for document signing? What if they do get under contract and something goes wonky with the inspections, the escrow, the appraisal, the lender, or any of the other dozens of things that can jeopardize a real estate transaction? Will the part time, no coverage in place “agent” be able to get away from his “real job” in order to hold the transaction together?

For his client’s sake, I hope so.

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

August 26, 2008 By Jay Thompson

Jack Nicholson, one of my all-time favorite actors, in one of my all-time favorite movies A Few Good Men, delivered a memorable quote ”” “You can’t handle the truth!”. He was, to say the least, quite emphatic in the delivery.

Late last night “A agent” left a comment on yesterday’s post where I said, “Now isn’t the best time to sell”.

Here is the comment, unedited and in its entirety:

I dont understand why you would say this is not a good time to sell a home!! You sell homes for a living!! The media is out to get us and now other agents (YOU) are to!! How do you think this makes agents look!! STUPID!! Why do you do this?

Getting past the poor grammar and excessive use of exclamation points, what is it that “a agent” is really trying to convey?

Apparently “agent” feels I am doing my real estate agent brethren a disservice when I opine on this blog.

Well”¦ in a nutshell, too bad.

Here’s the deal. I didn’t write “now isn’t the best time to sell” to make agents look stupid. I wrote it because in my opinion it is the truth. In the Phoenix market (and many others across the country) this clearly is not the best time to sell a home. Prices are declining, inventory is bloated, and buyers are in the drivers seat. None of that bodes well for selling a home. This is not opinion, this is simple fact.

I write here on many different topics. Real estate is of course the primary subject, but even the most casual reader of Phoenix Real Estate Guy will swiftly see that this blog isn’t just about real estate.

While I freely inject my opinion in all matters, one thing you will never see me do (here and in life in general) is stifle or sugar-coat the truth. That’s just the way I was raised, like it or leave it. If you want sunshiney sales talk with kum-ba-ya playing in the background, you should probably just move along ”” trust me, there is plenty of that out there, and it’s not hard to find. I’m not going to blow smoke up anyones hindquarters just to make a sale. I don’t expect anyone to agree with everything I say, far from it. But please, don’t come here telling me that I’m out to get other agents or making the collective look stupid by telling the truth. That’s just silly.

I leave you with a few quotes from people far smarter than I am regarding the truth.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
”“ Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful.
”“ Edward R. Murrow

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
”“ Mark Twain