3 Myths About Big Real Estate Brokers

A reputation is nice. Having your home sold well is nicer. A well-known name and good marketing can go together, but this is often not the case. Here are a few false ideas about big real estate agencies that we would like to clarify:

Myth 1: Real estate agencies are big because they sell homes well.

Actually, the size of real estate agencies has little to do with selling homes at all, let alone selling them well. The most common reason behind an agency’s large size is the fact that most agents are independent contractors who must have a broker to represent if they’re going to have work. A broker will build an umbrella-like agency to cover a large number of these agents in return for a portion of their commissions.

Now, it is true that agents have many options when they are choosing an agency to work for. The fact that so many choose a particular agency does say something. They think the agency does good business, and will treat them well. Accurate as these opinions may be, it does not necessarily follow that the agency will sell a particular home well. What often happens in these loosely organized agencies is that they decide to value quantity and turnover more than the quality of a specific sale. They sell as many homes as quickly as possible. The sheer number of sales keeps the business doing well. Such agencies are the mass production factories of the real estate world.

Myth 2: Big real estate agencies have larger networks of buyers.

We’ll admit it. This used to be entirely true. Before the invention of the internet. In the good old days the bigger an agency you were the more contacts you had. The more agents you had the more potential buyers you could network with.

Social networking is just as powerful today as it’s always been, but the context has changed so drastically that size really no longer matters. Google ranking matters. The amount of Facebook friends matters. The number of hits on a website matters. It is now possible for a single person to network as extensively as an entire company. Add to this the fact that almost 80% of all homebuyers shop online for a home, and there can be no doubt that the regime of the big gossipy agency is at an end. Size no longer matters when it comes to alerting people that a home is on the market.

Myth 3: Big real estate agencies are safer to use.

We usually assume that the larger a business is, the more they have people breathing down their neck to make sure they are doing everything in a proper and legal way. This is not the case in real estate. No one’s watching any of us. Just kidding. Officials stringently enforce the same laws and regulations for all agents and brokers across the board, whether big or small. They watch all agencies carefully because we are dealing with very large financial agreements and significant investments. A little agency like ours abides by the same rules as the large companies in order to protect our clients.

To sum up, here is our advice: when you are deciding what agency to have sell your home, look at the agency’s marketing techniques, their ethics, and their results. Choose the agency based off their work rather than their name, and you will be happier with the end result.