Brokers Lack Technical Skills
Further, many brokers are not terribly technologically savvy. This can be a mere inconvenience when engaging a broker. It can be a huge disadvantage in, say for example, a quick-moving multiple-offer scenario. Brokers do not need to be the most technically proficient people you deal with. But find a broker who is at least of average technological competence.
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A broker calls late one Sunday morning. She had just shown one of our listings and she asked all the right questions. You can tell, serious buyer. At the end of the conversation, she says, okay, I’ll send you an offer. Now in North Carolina, our standard form offer is fourteen pages. So it takes a while to put together. So later that day, I receive her email. With fourteen attachments. Fourteen jpeg attachments. Fourteen photo files. One for each page.
The offer itself was not bad at all. Full price, conventional financing, other terms okay. I spoke with the sellers who said, sure, send it over and we’ll sign it. So the quickest thing I knew to do was to ask the broker to re-scan as one complete pdf document. She said that may take some time because her assistant was on vacation. So rather than wait, I started cropping her photos, converting each to a pdf, and then combining them. A time-consuming and imperfect solution, but it was doable.
About half way through this process, I get a call from another broker: Hey, did you get my email? Yes, you see where this is going. He had shown the house on Friday, and after viewing other houses on Saturday and Sunday morning, he had just emailed an offer. One thousand over list and all cash. So we go into multi-offer mode and the details of that are not important here. What is important is the sellers had been ready to sign the first offer. And after requesting best offers from both buyers and some negotiation, they ended up taking the second offer.
When I mentioned this to the first broker, she said: Sweetie, I’ve been in this business 25 years and closed thousands of deals. What about you? My response? You’re right, have a nice weekend.
But one thing I can guarantee you: When she talked to her buyers, what do you think she told them? Simply: We were outbid. And how would they know otherwise?
Just think about this. Think about the trust that her buyers placed in her. And yet, they will never know just how misplaced that trust was.
Now I know what you’re thinking: That must have been in 2008, or even earlier. No, this was late 2018.
Ah, the joy of working with real estate brokers.
While the digital revolution has transformed other industries, the real estate business remains stubbornly and notoriously anti-technology. Most brokers and firms simply do not value technology and what it can do for the business and their clients. Grudging modernization has come with extremely poor technology choices, not broker or client friendly, and certainly not cost-effective. This has been a consistent pattern over the last thirty years.
Many brokers are even proud of their lack of technical competence: No sweetie, I don’t need to learn your new technical thingie because my clients value my high-touch service. Said, I assure you, with smug arrogance and condescension.
Nothing wrong with high-touch service. But it can be used as an excuse to keep prices high. And to not keep up-to-date. Keeping up-to-date takes time. I don’t care how you learn. I know some people like to take classes. Some prefer structured self-taught programs. Some will watch Youtube videos. Some will actually read manuals. Me? I like to just play around with new software and gadgets. But however one does it, it does take time. Precious time away from acquiring clients.
Many brokers don’t seem to understand that technology can add a level of convenience and service to the client. Or more likely, as with so many other aspects of the conveying real property side of the business, the brokers just don’t care.
Technology is not important to them.
It is worth noting how many of these same brokers are all over social media. They spend oodles of time there and can easily detail the intricacies of each site. Why? Well, they view this as a Client Acquisition activity.
They may not be able to manipulate a pdf document. But they post to Facebook and Instagram multiple times a day, they serve as the neighborhood lead on Nextdoor, and judging by my inbox, they seem to believe that email marketing is a productive use of their time.
And if it is this bad for the obvious stuff, one can just imagine how bad it might be for the less obvious: A broker’s back office technology or lack of technology. Document security and encryption, backup procedures, email security and wire fraud prevention, password management, financial records, etc. There is a lot of client data in a broker’s hands. Does anyone really think that they give it the proper respect and attention it deserves.
Given the routine nature of pdf documents in the real estate business, is this not a valid indication of a broker’s overall technological competence? Let me ask you this: If a broker cannot master pdf creation and manipulation, do you really think she has an adequate document security system in place?
I’m just asking.