Real Estate Agent Sterotypes

[Masyn Grant Barney]

We all know that there is a common stereotype that RE agents are slimy, dishonest, greedy, etc. Why is that? Is it changing? Is it warranted? 

I recently did a LinkedIn Poll where 35% of people said that most real estate agents are "sleazy / slimy / unethical". While that is technically a minority, it still represents a large portion of the public who don't seem to trust agents. In my opinion, this perception isn't unique to real estate agents but is common among sales people as a whole. I believe there are a few main reasons agents receive more of the fallout than other sales people. 

1. Their pay is more transparent. The public loves to self determine what is "too much" to get paid.

2. Their product is more emotional than most. When a transaction goes bad, it is much more personal. 

3. In this market, the mentality that "homes sell themselves" is taken a little too literally

So the questions is, what can agents do to regain the publics trust? Or is this stereotype inherent to the business and a hurdle that will always need to be overcome? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[Bruce Lynn]

I think one issue is that we fail to tell or show the clients how much we do behind the scenes.

I think sometimes they think we show up for 5-10minutes and show them a house, when I may spend 2-3 hours planning a route to save them time, pulling comps, pulling seller's disclosures, looking at the history of the house, making appointments, getting showing instructions, driving to/from showing, all the fees we just made to make that happen (with risk if they don't buy that house), etc.  They don't know we also had to spend time in class learning all that stuff, getting licensed, maintaining license, and developing relationships to make all the parts of buying the house run smooth and as pain free as possible for them.   I've taken calls from 100 lenders, vetted the very best ones with the lowest interest rates and fees....watched 100s of inspections to get them the picky and most experienced ones, instead of the softball one they found on YELL.  and on and on.....they just see the 5mins we show up to let them in the house.

I tell buyers sometimes when their lender doesn't close on time it cost me 100 phone calls....calls to lender, other agent, title company, buyer, and all those people multiple times.

We send them an offer electronically to sign, that many sign in a few seconds, but may have taken an hour to write and more time to research.

While very unusual I just spend 4 1/2 hours going over HOA documents with a buyer....plus 1hr drive time...does he value my experience living, owning, and reviewing 100s of HOA documents to get to the point of being able to do that? Probably spent 10 hours or more explaining property taxes, how to keep them low, how to reduce his risk, and end the end how to save thousands. Again very unusual, but has English as 2nd language, hasn't lived in US that long.

Also based on 20+ years of doing this, helped him win a multiple offer situation when he was not the highest higher.

Then they see we get this nice fee at closing...and in their mind we only did 30 minutes of work.