Yes, that would be me, I went from a team of 3 to 6 buyer agents. Yesterday, I went to a Saline Chamber meeting, my past client from google spoke, I did a 5 minute interview with him afterwards on my flip. (posted on AR)

Bottom line 70% of all clicks are organic, but PPC has the highest conversion rate at 30%. Interesting to put some stat’s behind it, but I knew that in my gut and results.

As bad as the economy gets, there are always going to be people who are looking to sell their homes, or buy a home. The only thing that’s going to be different for the next few years is that buyers will have to prove they can afford the mortgage payments.

The banks should have been requiring this all along. and with respect to the present bailout, that’s where things went terribly wrong. After all, without a GSE or a Congress to bail them out, no such mortgage would ever have been offered in the first place. That’s right, the lenders knew these buyers would default and were counting on being bailed out.

This is obviously a recipe for financial disaster.

Though I admit to being wrong to compare the present crisis to a hurricane. It’s more like an earthquake, and we’ll all be feeling the aftershocks for some time to come. Of course, everyone knew this earthquake was coming, and not only failed to prepare for it, but also pretended that it would never happen.

For people who make money in real estate, I can say this: This wasn’t the big one. The big one is yet to come. And at the rate we’re going, it will be soon. I have a stack of stories of Realtors who are now homeless and living out of their cars, and I expect it will only get worse as the Alt-A mortgages begin to default in large numbers in the next few months.

The sad truth is that we’ve passed recession and are headed for a depression, if we aren’t already there. Whether the depression is short, with recovery within a year or so, or it’s prolonged for a decade or more, depends largely on what Congress does. If the bailout stays dead, then it’ll likely be short, and by this time next year we’ll be more or less stabilized (and the homeless Realtors will be back in business). If they pass a bailout, then it will only prolong the agony, and things will get even worse than you can yet imagine.

I’ve always been a listing agent. But there’s nothing whatsoever superior about a listing agent as compared to a buyers’ agent — except for income.

We all do things in life because what we weren’t good enough at something else. I ran long distance, because I got my butt handed to me in college by real sprinters who actually ran fast on the track, not just in their minds. I became an umpire in the NCAA because I didn’t have the skills to play amateur adult ball at the elite level. I became an investment specialist in real estate because, in the end, though a solid producer on the house side, the subjectivity got the best of me. I didn’t have what it took to deal with it.

So I did turned to what I was good at — objective analysis, numbers, research, etc. The following comment brings much of my own experience to the table.

Proffering the idea, (axiom?) listing to last, is to me, akin to positing water is wet — but I digress.

No offense intended to buyers agents everywhere, as some of my best friends are BA’s. I’ve found, since the term was created, they’ve been somewhat sensitive to some truisms.

1. The vast majority of them choose the buyer side because they failed at the listing side. That’s not good or bad in and of itself, it’s merely fact, at least in my experience. It’s also what almost all of them told me themselves.

Let’s let down our virtual hair a minute, OK? If they tried listing, they didn’t leave it ‘cuz they were makin’ so much darned money. If they didn’t try it, why not? Why’d they quit listing properties?

Don’t we know the answers to those questions? Do we have to spell it out?

2. I’m sorry for how this sounds, but if I wanted to make six figures in San Diego without having to prospect in any way, I’d become a BA. I know a part timer here with three kids who works every year ’till she crosses the $100K mark, then takes the rest of the year off. You guessed it, she’s a BA.

In her words, (paraphrased of course) — “I show up in the morning. They give me relatively vetted leads. I call them, setting up appointments. I separate the wheat from the chaff, and usually by Halloween, I have my hundred grand.

She works an average of 10-25 hours weekly — not every week though.
True, if she was in Dayton or Grand Rapids her income would be more like $40K. But then her cost of living wouldn’t be in the same arena as San Diego’s.

3. In the end, they show up, wait for the head agent to pass out the candy, grab their share, become skilled at finding the ones with the commission filled centers, eat them until sated.

Have I missed anything?

Oh yes, it seems I have.

4. The aforementioned commission filled candy. It was handed out, not always, but surely the 80/20 rule applies, by, (you know what’s coming), a listing agent.

Now one could argue the cost to market and advertist on Zillow or Trulia is more cost effective as a farm, but I’m not sure how you can measure (as a portfolio) buyers in a market divided by the number of active agents.

Regarding Mack’s comment that web sites … or blogs … generate more buyers, I’ve found that my blog is more likely to gain sellers since they investigate how an agent markets their listings. I’ve had sellers tell me they Googled various agents to see who does the best job. They also look to see whether the focus is on promoting the agent OR the home.

I like listings!