The following article is made up of various excerpts from websites dedicated to real estate. Sites like Inman News and Rsimedia have expert writers that study and write about the future of real estate brokerages.
Carolina Living Real Estate serving the Charlotte NC, Lake Norman and surrounding areas was created with these ideas and years of experience in mind.
Where many Charlotte real estate agents fail.
- Most agents do not treat their business as a business.
- They fail to track how marketing dollars are performing.
- They fail to track profit and loss as any sound business does.
- They fail to analyze the true value their brokerage is providing.
Here are a few examples. Agents will continue to work for 50% commission with a firm without taking a step and evaluating how much business is directly related to the firm. Unfortunately fear holds them back. Amazingly agents will give up much of their money because a firm will advertise in a media that only a small portion of the population actually uses to search for home.
Where Older Established Firms Fail
The concept of bricks and mortar is fast becoming a model of the past. Firms that have not survived this market are the ones thave have huge rent or mortgage payments. The only alternative is to charge the agents and agents are leaving many of these firms for more money and technology training. In the past, agents could take floor time and there was a good chance they could get business from walk-ins or call-ins. With the growth of the internet, this whole business model is flawed. Consumers look for presence on the web and gain trust and knowlege before ever calling an agent. This is another flaw that agents fall into and fail to, again, evaluate value.
Impact to consumers.
A lot of what we hear all the time now is commissions, commissions commissions. While discounting commissions is not something we are advocates of, it is easier to remain profitable if you get into this situation and need to negotiate with clients when you are keeping your income. Agents working for 50% or for larger companies do not have this luxury and thus often times lose the business. In the Charlotte market, there is one firm that dedicates complete training sessions on commission justification. It takes any discounting out of the agents pocket!
At Carolina Living Real Estate, we provide the following:
- 100% commission and a transaction fee
- Free membership in the enhanced version of Realtor.com
- We train agents on building their own custom blog and website.
We believe this model creates a successful environment for agents to succeed as well as providing an environment that enables our agents to give the best service in the Charlotte and Lake Norman areas.
