What’s the Goal?

Has New York real estate become a reality show? Are extremely fit agents with moussed hair (of both sexes) really duking it out over who made a billion dollars in sales last year in front of millions of enthusiastic TV viewers? The hype in the press might make you believe that answer is yes. It can seem our business serves the purpose of promoting brokers rather than serving clients,  that the buyer, the seller, and the property merely provide convenient foils against which the hyper-inflated agent can shine. How did our priorities get so reversed?

For the consumer, these changes produce no clear benefit. It may be tempting for consumers to believe that that woman on TV really knows what she is doing (some do, some REALLY don’t) or that the TV spot is going to sell your property (if it’s priced right, it will sell anyway; if not, it won’t, even if the photo appears on every Twitter feed in America). But let’s not conflate celebrity and expertise.

More pressingly, real estate is following the same path that the finance industry followed in the 80s: the servant becomes the master. Our role as agents is to work behind the scenes to make sure transactions are facilitated and that clients and customers are properly advised. We should not appear in the forefront of the public eye. As practitioners in a service business, the work is NOT about us!

I accept that the notion with which I grew up, that your name should only appear when you are born, wed, and die, seems quaintly old-fashioned now (and, as is clear from this blog, I don’t adhere to it myself!) But to create such a dramatic turnaround that the agent should be offering the simple gift of HIMSELF, rather than the combination of intelligence, discretion, contacts and experience which will underpin the best possible transaction, seems dramatically off course.

The current brokerage environment has actually created a wonderful opportunity for Warburg Realty and firms who share our values.  A company like mine can distinguish itself by showing an interest in  the “eulogy virtues”, focused on the benefit of others and the community, rather than only the “resume virtues”, which focus primarily on the self. At Warburg we still care about who the people who carry the company card ARE, not just how much they make (don’t get me wrong; we care about that too.)  We don’t want our agents taking the easy but questionable shortcut. We want our agents to concentrate on selling the property before they sell themselves, and we want to make sure they know how to best shepherd the DEAL across the finish line.

We understand that our primary goal is to make transactions work for our clients, not to leverage their transactions to work for us.  Who do you want representing you?