Sequim real estate broker Chuck Marunde is expanding his brokerage in a time when brokers all over the country and in Clallam County are going out of business and closing.  What gives?  How can one Sequim real estate broker expand when others are closing?

Sequim Real Estate Broker is Virtual

The traditional brick-and-mortar real estate office was a successful business model for decades (for the Sequim real estate broker and brokers around the country), from the 1950s up to about 2006.   For 56 years at least brokers built large buildings with big conference rooms and hired as many agents as possible.  The broker/owners eventually built large rooms with lots of cubicles as they packed as many agents in a room as possible with the least amount of overhead.  Because top producing agents only made up a small percentage of agents, that meant that the majority of agents were average or below average producers.  Brokers had to bring in as many licensees as possible to make it profitable, meaning they would take any Tom, Dick, or Jane who had a license.  Traditional print media, particularly newspapers and magazines, were the primary means of advertising.  Consumers called off the ads or the signs, and sellers listed with the big offices because it seemed like that’s where the action was.

Sequim Real Estate Broker uses Technology

Alas, this Sequim real estate broker realized that things were changing starting in the late 1990s as technology and the Internet gained momentum.  It’s no longer business as usual for the traditional Sequim real estate broker, but this is true all over the country.  Many agents have gone out of business in Sequim and Port Angeles as well as around the country.  Offices have closed, even in Port Townsend, Sequim, and rumors have been circulating that a Port Angeles office will be closing.

Sequim Real Estate Broker Joined eXp Realty

I started Sequim and Port Angeles Real Estate as a brokerage almost three years ago.  I originally got in real estate sales about 30 years ago, practiced real estate law for 20 years and then came back to real estate sales and transactions.  After retiring from law practice, I joined a traditional real estate brokerage, but I quickly found out they were not using the latest technologies and tools to help buyers and sellers.  They were seriously stuck in a 20-year old business model, and they had excessive overhead that clients didn’t care about.  Buyers and sellers use the Internet and they don’t care about big conference rooms and big expensive buildings.  That’s when I decided to become a Sequim real estate broker and build a business model that truly put the clients at the center of the Universe.

That was very successful, and then I discovered a brand new brokerage that was doing what I had learned to do with technology and the Internet and that also focused on helping agents and their clients to be successful in entirely new ways, and that’s when I joined this national brokerage, eXp Realty.  There’s nothing even close to eXp Realty and what we are doing to help agents succeed in this market with low overhead, high net commission splits, and residual income.

Brokers are going out of business all over the country, and others are struggling to survive.  This Sequim real estate broker is not just surviving but thriving.

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When homes don’t sell quickly like they did in 2005, many salespeople in the real estate industry resort to gimmicks.   Some homeowners have picked up on these gimmicks thinking that they must work.   Gimmicks don’t sell homes, but real estate agents can testify that gimmicks do get homeowners to sign listing agreements.

Some gimmicks are just plain silly (not to mention expensive), and other gimmicks seem to have some potential, but closer insight by experienced professionals will tell you otherwise.

One of the more ludicrous gimmicks that has spread to a couple of places across the country is the offer of a luxury car to the buyer of an expensive home.   A Phoenix developer mistakenly took the counsel of his real estate advisor and offered a brand new $200,000 Bentley to anyone who purchased one of his multi-million dollar homes.

One of the homes, described as the “Old World European Villa,” is priced just under $5 million and is about 7,800 square feet.   The other, which is called “Tuscan Estate,” is under $4 million and is about 7,500 square feet.   [Read Real Estate Gimmicks to Sell Homes.]

This same idea was picked up again recently by a homeowner in Orlando, Florida.   Jim Benson is offering the buyer of his $699,000 home a vintage 1967 Rolls Royce.   Such gimmicks have never worked, and professional salesmen with experience under their belts will all share that.   Of course, someone will pipe up, “Well, it does get the guy some exposure and that’s promoting the home, right?”   Wrong.   Exposure without a sale is just wasted energy, right?

The goal is to sell the home, not to have gimmicks that the public finds entertaining for a few minutes in the news.   There are some gimmicks, however, that seem to have some promise.   Real estate brokers and agents around the country are coming up with new gimmicks to get listings.

It’s been a tough year for real estate brokers around the country as they struggle to explain (repeatedly) to their listing clients why their homes have not sold.   What many agents are thinking now is that they just need more and more listings.   It used to be that “listings was the name of the game,” and you could list homes and let other agents sell them.   Well, we got away from that, but many agents are thinking that if they have a lot of listings, just maybe some of them will get sold, and the agent can survive in this market to live and sell another day.

One of the gimmicks some agents use around the country is to “bid for listings.”   Homeowners who want to sell and get the highest possible price will most often list with the agent who promises them the highest listing price.   Not very smart of the homeowner (ignorance of the truth is no excuse), but it is especially not very ethical or professional on the part of the agent.   For some agents, the rule is:   Anything to get a listing.

Another gimmick large brokerage companies are toying with (remember, toys are for children), is to call expired listings or FSBO’s, and give them the latest hot sales pitch.   It goes something like this:

Hi, my name is [agent's name] and I’m a real estate consultant (a nice catchy new phrase) and Realtor.   I notice your home listing recently expired, and I’d like to tell you about an exciting new program we at [brokerage name] are offering absolutely free of charge to homeowners like you.   May I tell you about it?   [What homeowner won't say yes at that point.   Nothing to lose, right?]

Great.   We have a very powerful new program to help homeowners like you figure out what you can do to sell your home in this market in a very short time.   It works like this.   We bring six to twelve of our agents to your neighborhood and to your home.   We spend time looking it over and then we discuss it among ourselves–with you present, of course–right there at your home.   We discuss the value of your home, what you have been doing to sell it and at what price.   We discuss the state of the market, what is selling and where and for how much.   We talk about marketing and the latest and most effective techniques to sell a lovely home like yours.   We answer any questions that you have, and then we leave.   No obligation at all.   Of course, I would love to list your home and sell it for you in the next 30 to 90 days, but that would be entirely your decision, and there’s no obligation at all. Does this sound like something you might find helpful?

Wow!   I just drafted that script off the top of my head, but it sounds so good, I might just use it myself.   No, just kidding.   It’s nothing but a gimmick, and you have to think it through to realize that.

Imagine this.   Imagine a nice brokerage company with lots of agents.   The agents are individually struggling, because their listings are not selling in this slow market, the phones are not ringing like they were in 2005, and buyers are not exactly stampeding into the office lately.   To make matters worse, print advertising in newspapers and magazines is not selling real estate either, but it sure is expensive.

As a homeowner you wouldn’t really jump up and down with excitement to hire one of these traditional agents with no ideas and a 20-year old business model that is not all that exciting anymore. So here’s the big question.

Why would you think that putting six to twelve of these same agents in the same room is somehow going to be the catalyst of extraordinarily new and exciting techniques to sell you home?   A group think tank only works if the individuals in the group have something to offer.

Watch this.   Many homeowners who are desperate to sell and have not read this article will list with agents who read this script.   They don’t know it’s just a gimmick, and they’re desperate to try something.

Are homes selling with these gimmicks? The answer is no.   Gimmicks don’t sell homes.   Good marketing and connecting with the right buyer is what sells homes.   That’s why I’ve built the largest Internet brokerage in Sequim and Port Angeles.   The Internet is the single most effective way to sell homes.   Period.   But there is much more to the story about how to effectively price and market a home.

The answer is not group think.   If you have a home in Sequim or Port Angeles you want to sell, call me on my cell at 360-775-5424.   My name is Chuck Marunde.

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Port Angeles Homes For Sale and Sequim Homes For Sale:   The whole business is changing.   How people buy and sell real estate has been dramatically evolving, and recently the momentum of this evolution has been accelerating.   There are three ways this change is obvious.

1.   When you want to sell your home, it’s no longer simply a matter of listing it with a Realtor and having your Realtor post your listing in the MLS.   That’s still important, but the MLS is no longer the powerful monopoly it once was.   Realtors no longer have a monopoly on the real estate databases, and the flow of information has been blown wide open on the Internet.   And those newspaper advertisement to sell your home?   They don’t work like they used to.

2.   When you want to buy a home you are no longer forced into calling a salesman or going to their office.   Now you can search the Internet and even search the MLS entirely on your own without any annoying sales people pressuring you to work with them.   In fact, the Internet is the only good way to find your next home, because the newspapers only have a handful of listings advertised.   Your ideal home is almost certainly not advertised in the newspaper when you happen to read it that Sunday.   Remember, the goal of advertising homes for sale in the newspaper is not to sell those homes, because any experienced Realtor will tell you they don’t, but to get you to call that Realtor so they can sell you another house (which you could have simply found on the Internet).   I’m sorry if these truths seem a bit harsh, but wouldn’t you as a buyer or seller like to know how things really work?

3.   Marketing and advertising real estate has really changed of late.   Advertising listings in newspapers has become so ineffective that Realtors all around the country have either substantially reduced their advertising, or in the case of many I know, they no longer waste money advertising listings in the newspapers.   Why?   They aren’t getting calls from those ads.   It doesn’t work like it used to, and it’s expensive.   Over 80% of all home buyers start their search on the Internet now.   For areas like Sequim and Port Angeles where a majority of our buyers come from out of the area, especially California, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, these buyers are not even reading the local newspaper or the local real estate magazines.   They use the Internet.   But using the Internet to sell homes is not for the uninitiated.   It has gotten extremely competitive, technologically very complicated, and requires a multitude of skills.   (Sure, anyone can post a listing on a FSBO service or on Craigslits, but that is not even close to effective Internet marketing and search engine optimization.   There is much much more to effective Internet marketing.   Much more.)

As a professional in real estate for 30 years (real estate lawyer and Realtor), I can say without any doubt that the evolution of the technology (with all the economic changes, too) of buying and selling real estate today has not reduced the need for a professional Realtor–it has increased the need.   But most buyers and sellers don’t know this.   The game hasn’t gotten simpler: it has changed.

What the Internet and the all changes in how real estate is bought and sold has done is provide new tools and efficient ways to buy and sell, but this has not eliminated the need for the knowledge and experience to use these tools to help buyers negotiate the best price and terms and to help sellers efficiently market and sell their homes in the least amount of time for the best price.   As I have said elsewhere, there are many traps for the unwary.   (Like the dangerous trap shown above in the photo which I took at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort.)

Read more of my articles on this blog on marketing, sales, prices, negotiating like an expert, for sale by owners, listing, legal issues, and more.   Go to:   SequimRealEstateNews.com.   You can use the search feature to find what you are looking for, and that will help you filter through the hundreds of articles.

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Are homes and land selling in Sequim and Port Angeles? Absolutely. Here is a vignette of this last weekend in my small world.

I sold four properties this past weekend, three of my listings in Port Angeles, and a house in Carlsborg, adjacent to Sequim.

The Port Angeles home is west of Port Angeles a few miles (see photo). The sales price was the full listing price at $425,000. This is a 4 bedroom home on over 2 acres with a 36 x 60 foot shop and covered RV Parking, fruit trees and adjacent to DNR property. [View more photos]

The two lots, consisting of over 5 acres total, sold to one buyer for $329,000. These lots are on treed property that has roads and all utilities installed. This property is also west of Port Angeles, which is becoming more and more attractive to buyers.

The Carlsborg home sold for $210,000 to a young couple intending to live in the home and use it for a permitted business use.

Real estate is selling, and buyers are alive and well in Sequim and Port Angeles. Here’s an insider tip for sellers: your homes and lots are not selling through traditional advertising methods. Buyers are not primarily reading the papers and calling off large public display advertising. They’re not attracted to 30 year old advertising techniques. In fact, they’re turned off by such advertising, which they find a bit offensive. Ah, but that is all I can say here, because my competitors do not need a lesson from me, or should I say, I don’t think I want to give them free training on this blog.

Are you selling a home or land in Sequim or Port Angeles? Call me at (360) 775-5424. I’m very easy to talk to, and there’s no obligation at all. Just answers. Just a friendly and experienced voice of reason at this end of the phone.

Possibly Related Posts:

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