Yesterday while driving home from a networking meeting I heard a commercial for a certain online real estate company. The commercial did everything but blatantly lie to people. It danced very close to the edge of truth. The main way they got around telling people the truth was vocabulary.
There are a lot of words that mean one thing by dictionary definition, but mean something different when involved in a particular field of industry. For Realtors the word customer is one of those very important words that means something very different. For a Realtor a customer is pretty much the entire world. It is anyone we have the possibility of discussing real estate with. If you are reading this right now you are a customer.
The main tagline of the commercial was that to this company you were, "A customer not a commission." That is great because that is what the entire world is to me as well. That was there big thing. Their claim was they would never force a person to sign a contract in order to work with them. Too bad it is Virginia law that as of July 1st a Realtor has to have a signed agreement from a client.
It is a lot to explain but it might be worth explaining. The main point of it is that the state of Virginia is trying to do away with implied agency. Unless a Realtor and a client have a signed agreement to work together then they were never working together, and the agency relationship was never created.
What this means is that a consumer loses rights. If a person signs on to be my client and I agree to work with them then I owe them the duties of; Care, Obedience, Loyalty, Disclosure, Accounting, and Confidentiality. The duties that I owe to a customer on the other hand are ministerial duties. Basically I can't lie to them and I can show them where the paperwork is for them to fill out.
So when this company says that you are a customer and not a commission that means they are offering to not lie to you and to hand you paperwork to fill out. It is important to know what you aren't being offered instead of falling into a trap of working with someone who is not obligated to do anything for you, because they promised to give back some of their commission.
Owe, I hadn't mentioned that yet. Sorry but that is what this company really offers, a bribe. If you work with them as a customer instead of with me as a client then they will give money back to you at closing or after closing. Be careful if anyone promises to give money back after closing because it is taxable even if they say it isn't and if the IRS finds out then that could be very bad.
There is an old saying that if someone lies to you in your first conversation then you can't trust anything they say afterwards. They painted such a nasty picture of me as someone who looks at everyone through dollar sign colored glasses that I decided I should extend the courtesy and translate their commercial for my readers.
If you work with them over me they won't offer you the care, obedience, loyalty, disclosure, accounting, and confidentiality that I offer plus they will give you back money but that money is taxable as income. There is another saying in this world that you get what you pay for and they do tell you that their Realtors work on salary, but they get rewarded with bonuses for customer satisfaction.
If they don't satisfy you they still draw a salary. If I don't satisfy my clients then I get nothing. Plus my business ends and I am out of real estate because an unsatisfied client is no longer a source of referrals. Next time you hear this commercial listen to it with my ears and see if this great offer sounds that great anymore.
I lean something new in real estate everyday
so you don't have to
David Huzzard
www.SuperNoVaRealty.com
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