If a Real Estate Brokerage Served Cheeseburgers…
June 21st, 2007 Deeper Thoughts
I Feed Bagged Jeff Browns great post One Stop Shops Just Don’t Measure Up — Pitchers Aren’t Shortstops earlier today. The diamond being…
“In all my years, I’ve yet to see a one stop in real estate that did a all-star job in all areas. They say they offer real estate brokerage, mortgage brokerage, property management, and transaction coordination. And they do — just not in an excellent fashion. Even if they’re pretty good at everything, it’s not excellent. And when you’re handling other folks’ money, pretty good just doesn’t cut it.”
I posted a similar thought back in May with Horizontal vs Vertical Agency
“Most realtors actually do about 8–10 main tasks and wear multiple hats. There is the advertising writing hat, photo taking hat, listing appointment hat, transaction co-ordinator hat, CMA hat, home finder hat, answering the phones hat, farm the geographic area with flyers hat, graphic designer hat, stage the home hat.”
I’m starting to think that if a typical real estate brokerage served cheeseburgers, there would be 50 people working an average shift…
When an order was taken the same person who took the order would run out to the grill and throw the patties down, then shoot across to the fry station and dump a load of fries in, get the cups filling for the drinks, run back and flip the patties, run to the fry station and shake the fries, cap the drinks, get the patties off the grill and assemble the burgers, run to the fry station, drain the fries, box the fries and then finally load the customers tray and collect a full service fee for the effort. I’m thinking $120 for a family of four would be right for this metaphor.
The other 49 people wouldn’t be doing anything very much except complaining about not getting drive-through clients.
Am I stupid here? Shouldn’t someone be on fries, a couple people on the grill, a couple people up front taking orders, someone on drive through and aren’t the customers capable of getting their own drinks anyway? I’m thinking $20–25 is about right. Wouldn’t brokerages instantly move to this model if all agents were on a salary?
How many hats does an agent have to wear before the quality of service starts to fall?
June 21st, 2007 at 7:28 pm
I’d like some salt on my fries, please.
My brokerage is “everything under one roof”, but I’m not the service provider for everything. We have partners under the same heading: Long Realty, Long Mortgage, Long Title, Long Insurance. Not quite the same thing that Mr. Brown was discussing, but one-stop shopping is part of the sales pitch for our brokerage. Everyone has their own service they provide, but our systems work together fairly seamlessly. Nice part about it is that those people are highly motivated to please me and my clients. Also, each of our offices has a mortage rep in the office, and a title/escrow branch usually in the same building or office complex. Very convenient for all involved.
June 21st, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Jeff and I are talking about slightly different things, but on parallel themes of teamwork.
Actually I think that is exactly what Jeff is discussing Kelley. And I agree, and Jeff likely does too that, that setup is “pretty good”. But everywhere Jeff goes he tries to create the 1996/7 Chicago Bulls of real estate. Odds are someone in your office might make that team, just not the entire office.
Put it this way…
When I think Jeff is wrong about something real estate related, I always express that in the form of a question.
I just hope that statement doesn’t get on a billboard anywhere.
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:38 am
Athol - Always finding way to demonstrate your innate common sense.
For seven years I was with Prudential CA in San Diego. They had the identical set-up Kelley described. I never once used the lender or the title company. I used the in-house escrow company because I’d known the top escrow officer for 15 years, AND she was expert at 1031’s, a big deal with me.
They were, as Athol guessed, all pretty good — just not excellent. You can get away with pretty good locally, but when you’re doing business in muyltiple states, anything less than all-star performance will catch with you big time.