The Perks of using a real estate agent

With the Competition Bureau pushing for a more publicly-accessible Multiple Listings Service (MLS), and for-sale-by-owners sites, such as Property Guys, picking up steam, you may be tempted to forgo the services of a real estate agent and tackle your home sale yourself.

Before you invest the inevitable time and money to this endeavour, however, you may want to reconsider the pros of using a real estate agent.

If you’re a seller...

-    With an estimated 85% of homebuyers opting for the services of a real estate agent, a selling agent (and his/her fellow colleagues) have more access to potential buyers. This means more Open House traffic, more ad visibility, and more of your “ideal buyers” coming through your door.

-    While your home may look perfect to you, it may not meet the style and trend preferences of today’s buyer. Because real estate agents are in tune with the latest “must haves”, and deal with modern buyers on a day-to-day basis, they can offer the fresh set of eyes your home needs. This translates into simple but successful self-staging ideas that have the potential to move your home much quicker.

-    Listing at the right price is crucial if you want to sell your home as quickly as possible. Because real estate agents have access to past sales and comparables, they can help you find that magic number that will get the right people through the door.

If you’re a buyer...

-    Purchasing a new home can be daunting (and a lot of hard work) if you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for. A real estate agent who specializes in your ideal area is up-to-date on the homes for sale in your market. As a result, they can save you a lot of legwork and show you homes that fall in line with what you’re looking for.

-    Because they know the ins and outs of specific areas (and surrounding areas), they may be able to help you find your dream home in an unexpected place.

-    Real estate agents negotiate for a living – and yours will negotiate hard in your favour. Depending on the circumstance, they may also add in certain clauses that will make the sale as beneficial to you as possible  -- such as closing timelines and other conditions

Our Lending Partners

I believe strongly that we really need to embrace and support our lender partners.  After all they are our suppliers and without our suppliers we do not have much of a business.

That said, I also strongly believe that any partnership is stronger when the partners are on an equal footing.  As brokers we need to stand united in the service and value that we provide to our lender partners.  The problem we have run into in the last number of years is that we, the broker community, have not done a great job of raising our game and providing a greater value to our suppliers.  If we cannot become a more efficient distribution channel our suppliers will be forced to find another way.

Lenders are more and more designing programs in such a way that they continue to fragment us as individuals.  Special deals from individual to individual.  The problem with this from a brokers perspective is that if we are not unified to some extent we are in an extremely vulnerable position.

We need to stop beating each other up and start to work together to grow our market share as a community.  If I were on the other side of the equation (ie the lenders seat) I would be pretty disappointed with the broker channel.  If I were a lender looking to grow an efficient and manageable distribution channel I would certainly have to take a long hard look at my internal sales force to see if I could do things more effectively.

If we continue to knock each other over the head with rate buy-downs we leave the opportunity for the direct mortgage sales force to run right up the middle and further reduce our market share.

Time for a Mortgage Revolution!

OK, time for a bit of a rant.  Over the last few months I have found myself quite dissillusioned with our industry.

I have seen instances where our brokers are running into some other brokers in our industry who have withheld information from lenders in order to get a deal done.  They have made some unethical, and sometimes completely misleading statements to consumers in order to get a deal.

I have seen our competitors telling blatant lies about our organization in order to recruit. It's time to speak up.

Our motto is Passion, Pride, Purpose and frankly right now there are a lot of things in our industry that I am not proud of.  It's time to take back our industry and get rid of those that do it a disservice.  

If you run into unethical behaviour, report it.  If an industry member is bad mouthing a competitor, call them on it.  With such a small market share for the broker community we don't have time to be fighting each other unless we are fighting unethical behaviors.

I am passionate about what we do for a living and for our consumers.  I am proud of our organization and the people we are affiliated with.  My purpose is to make this a great industry for all of us and help you grow your business and become a better mortgage professional.

If there is anything that you think we, as an organization, can assist with let me know.

Growth by Shrinking?!

While this statement may sound like an oxymoron, there is some real merit to it as a strategy.

Lenders are doing it

For a few years now we have seen a real move for lenders to try and move toward fewer, higher producing agents in order to improve efficiency.

Top Producers are Doing It

Many top mortgage brokers have believed in this strategy for a long time.  Have you ever had a referral source that was more hassle than they are worth?  Do you continue to accept their referrals?  Perhaps you shouldn't.  By removing high maintenance, toxic referral sources brokers can often grow their business by spending more time and giving better service to their existing client base and strong referral sources.

Should More Brokerages be Doing It?

I would argue an emphatic "Yes" to this one.  How many times have you heard one brokerage or another bragging about the number of agents they have on staff?  Bigger is often not better.  At Axiom we are committed to quality.  We don't want to be the biggest but we do have a burning desire to be the best.  If we need to, we are not afraid to "Shrink in order to Grow".

Think about it... could this strategy help you grow your business?

What are you thinking Mr. Flaherty?

Todays announced changes to the rules governing mortgage lending are just another indication of how out of touch our politicians are with reality. While I applaud any effort to create economic stability, it should be well thought out and actually have a positive impact.
Todays announcements include:

• Reducing maximum amortization to 30 years
• Reducing LTV of refinances from 90% to 85%
• Removing the ability to insure high ratio HELOCS

The most significant of which is reducing the available amortization period. The 35 year (and even 40 year) amortization is not the cause of household financial woes in Canada. Reducing the amortization does little to nothing to reduce Canadian debt loads. The impact of reducing the amortization period will be to simply reduce the amount of mortgage a home-owner or prospective home-owner can qualify for. This means a trickle down which will take some first time buyers out of the market and put additional downward pressure on house prices. This measure effectively penalizes those who purchased with a 35 or 40 year amortization in previous years, and therefore were willing to pay a higher amount for a home because of the reduced carrying cost of an extended amortization.

If a household is prepared to spend $1000/month on housing then that number is not going to change because of a reduced amortization. It simply means they can buy less house leaving a smaller market for those trying to sell their home, who perhaps purchased with a higher amortization. The only real impact this change has is to increase the likelihood that those that purchased at the peak with minimal equity will end up with negative equity. This does not alleviate problems but in fact causes more problems. People are more likely to ‘walk away' from an asset with negative equity in tough times rather than fight through to protect an asset with real or perceived long term value. Mr. Flaherty you are effectively jeopardizing the equity that you purport to be protecting.

To see the full announcement visit http://www.fin.gc.ca/n11/11-003-eng.asp