For several years I led 600 real estate agents across multiple markets. About 20% of my business involved the Homebuilder. Here’s what I learned that can be very helpful to the homebuilder when the real estate agent is marketing your new construction.
1. Real Estate Agents are all about ego. Nowhere in my 30 years experience have I come across a group of people that regardless of their past performance believe strongly that they are the only essential element in a home transaction. Now occasionally, you are fortunate enough to have a superstar agent that actually understands new construction, the differences in the buyer profile from their resale product and can sell the proverbial ice cube to the Eskimo. When that occurs, make sure you do whatever you can to continually assure that agent that they represent the success of your organization. Knowing these attributes should prepare you to weekly find anything positive the agent has done and make a concerted effort to praise their value. The more they believe you see their value the more they will take pride in your association and even brag to their peers about their connection to your company. This will also mean they will make the effort to discuss your available homes to other agents and assist you in keeping your business top of mind.
2. Broker/Owners are struggling to make ends meet. Their motivation is to cut cost and to minimize all direct cost associated with marketing. Most brokers understand that print advertizing is no longer an effective means of marketing a property but are held hostage to the older agent who cannot evolve into the 21st century on this issue. Understanding this issue could allow you to communicate with the broker your interest in saving cost by not utilizing print but to focus on supporting homes sales through electronic media. Specifically, requesting from a broker to create a web site that is SEO (search engine optimized) along with social media opportunities through Facebook and blogging can be more budget acceptable to the broker and ultimately more effective for the homebuilder. A broker should contribute 12% of their net profit in selling your homes to supporting the builder in this form of marketing.
3.The spin off business received by the broker for having agents representing the home builder is huge and rarely discussed. In today’s market, I have found that a broker obtains 5 resale opportunities for every new construction sale. This can be your greatest leverage in negotiating with the broker /owner on fees. I would recommend a maximum of 5% commission fee and hope that you attempt to negotiate an even better deal understanding this statistic.
Bottom line, the broker, agent can be a tremendous resource for the home builder if the home builder understands the motivation of the broker.