I have had enough of this nonsense comparing the traditional real
estate industry to the travel industry and its ultimate demise.
The comparison is both absurd and ill-conceived.
A travel agent sits behind a desk, makes travel arrangements and collects a commission that is likely split in several directions. It
was a task easily assumed by consumers with a computer. They could sit behind a desk, make travel arrangements online and save even more than the travel agent’s commission. They could also do it at midnight, in their pajamas, and never have to pick up the phone.
I confess to doing it myself.
Perhaps the travel industry business suffered because their services were too limited. I never had a travel agent drive me to the airport, let alone pilot the plane or navigate the cruise liner to my desired destination. None of them ever arranged low cost financing for the trip, or went with me to inspect the safety of the plane or ship, or crawled into the bellies of these vessels to make sure there were no obvious leaks or dangers. None of them arranged for inspectors to make
sure my travel destinations would be safe ones and fitting for me and my family.
You see, the kind of service most of us provide to our clients goes far beyond making appointments and writing contracts. We handle all
the details of the transaction and have a personal involvement in our client’s life transitions. We not only help relocating families register their kids for school, we also know the specifics of school district boundaries, which can sometimes be a tricky business. We also stay in touch with other real estate professionals and keep our ears to the ground. By doing so, we sometimes get outrageous buys for our clients–due to sensitive information that cannot published in the MLS. As in every professional endeavor, it helps to have friends in the business
Our job as full service real estate professionals is to not only help our clients carefully select a destination, but to professionally pilot the transaction from Point A to Point B–and possibly save even more money than Redfin’s rebate. Why? Because we care, and because we can.
And this all leads us back to Redfin and and its model of having real estate agents sit behind a desk, make occasional showing arrangements, manage
most details online and split the commission several ways. They even promise to send a “field agent” out for inspections. And if you want one of their agent to show you a property, the cost is something like $125, whether you buy or not (not unlike the fee I pay for an airport shuttle). For their lack of involvement in the transaction, they will rebate over 50 percent of the commission received.
And the stretched, but logical question: Is Redfin trying to reinvent the role of their real estate agents into one not unlike the travel agent dinosaurs of the last century?
