An Observation and an Opinion by Jeff Neumann

Some of you may recall I used to write real estate related articles for a local magazine entitled Snap’d, as well as for our monthly CBN newsletter. A confluence of two events ended that habit. First, Snap’d ceased publishing. Rather than seek out an alternative medium however, I must admit I was influenced by a phone call received by our front desk from a reader of one of my articles. ‘Tell Jeff he’s an idiot!’ Ouch !! While I am rapidly approaching (long beyond?) worrying about trying to please everyone, as a business owner I am cognizant of the fact that what I put out into the public domain reflects on the whole. The last thing I would want is for my article to have put in jeopardy a sale for one of our salespeople. As a business owner, (and we are all business owners), I ought to remain mindful of the notion that our potential pool of clients encompasses the entire kaleidoscope of views, tastes and opinions. We don’t serve any of our clients best interests by alienating a sliver of the rainbow. Michael Jordan was once asked why he did not take a public stand on social issues. ‘Republicans buy shoes too’ was his reply. Or to quote the great Pat Ireland, when it comes to your real estate sales business, you would be wise to ‘paint with a broad brush’. 

In any case, I have wanted to share with you some observations from the past, and opine on how they may relate to the future of our industry. 

The start of my real estate career was, by my own reckoning, less than stellar. Licensed in 1988 ( at twelve….or so it seems to me now) I was lucky enough to catch 6 months of a real estate bull market for the second half of that year. I got a taste of what a busy market could be before the wheels fell off in 1989. Not everyone’s wheels mind you, but certainly mine. The easy deals were gone, and the clients gravitated to those who had honed their craft. I could make excuses as to why that wasn’t me, but they would simply be excuses. The market we faced in 1989 was not entirely different from what we are facing today. 

So, as one sometimes does when sales are slow, I looked for ways to keep active, or in honest hindsight, a way to convince myself I was doing something. I joined the board of directors of what was then known as the Guelph and District Real Estate Board. Two things stick out in my memory from that experience. The first, was my amazement in a committee’s ability to turn twenty minutes of information into three hours of meeting time (the coffee and pastries didn’t help). The second is one I still reflect upon today as I recognize parallels to the current real estate environment and talk of the ‘looming threat of AI.’ A large issue of the day was realtors’ access to information. Namely, being a gatekeeper to MLS data. It dominated our meetings for my three years on the board. 

The MLS system has evolved but at that time it was largely seen not only as a means of gathering information but entrusting those of us who had become licensed realtors with disseminating the information on behalf of our clients. Listings were gathered and published biweekly in what was colloquially known as the ‘MLS Book’. On the back of the book was written a stark warning to us realtors that sharing the book with a member of the public was strictly prohibited, and if found guilty, could result in a ten thousand dollar fine! ( I doubt there was ever a fine issued - the threat may as well have been for a million dollars.) Suffice to say, there developed two trains of thought and they were often the subject of our board meetings. The first camp believed that realtors ought to be the only ones that should be allowed access to information such as historical sales data, current listings, past sales and anything in between. If the public wanted access to information, they would need to engage a realtor. This camp firmly believed that if the public had access to our information, it would indeed prove to be the end of what we commonly refer to as organized real estate. The second camp, (no doubt there were nuances in between) generally believed that this line of thinking was going to be a losing battle.

Among the board of directors at that time, I was in the minority by aligning with the second camp. This, together with my aversion to long meetings, foretold the end of my career path in real estate board politics. My exit from that path was a happy side benefit to my point of view which was basically this: if all I have to offer my client is information that the prevailing system has decided only I, or others like me, are entitled to have and share, then I am fighting a losing battle. It was a business plan based on holding information hostage.

Today, given the information age we are in and the easy access to data, it is hard to fathom that a significant segment of realtors thought it would be the end of our industry if our customers had access to the same information we had. In all my years in this industry, if there has been one constant, it is this: realtors who doubt the value they bring to the table have always been predicting the end of organized real estate. The internet was going to be the end of us - ‘clients won’t need us’. The Competition Bureau of Canada forcing organized real estate to allow public access to the MLS system was going to be the end of us - ‘when the public can put their property on the MLS system for free, why would they hire a realtor and pay a commission’? And today, for reasons we cannot even articulate, there are those among us that presume AI will spell the end of our industry.

I do not mean to minimize the challenges we have faced and are yet to face. But challenges are not our enemy, they are our friend. They cull the herd, and create an environment that demands that only those committed to honing their craft thrive. I’m a subscriber to the philosophy espoused by Henry Ford when he mused: ‘business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching for what it gets’. My hope is to reassure you, the committed realtor, that the skills you have honed will not become redundant. Your clients do not choose you because you have information. Information today is more than ever before ubiquitous. Your clients choose to work with you because they trust you. The agent who has mastered the ability to gain the trust and confidence of both buyers and sellers has as much job security today than at any time in the past.

There is no single path to agent success. If there were, there wouldn’t be a thousand different books instructing you how to do it. Even in my relatively limited experience owning a single brokerage, I am often struck by the myriad of systems employed by high producing agents, all varied, and all successful. But I would contend a necessary ingredient for both salespeople and brokerages is to be unfailingly truthful, for as the saying goes, trust is built in drops and lost in buckets.

Thanks for reading,

Jeff.

P.S. As a side note, brokerages face challenges too. Just as agents have to justify their fee or parish, so do we. We aim to be a brokerage that becomes and remains a collection of salespeople that embraces challenges, and out-services our competition.