Glory

I was going to label this blog ‘Giddy’ but I wrote a blog the other day that was called ‘Guts‘ and I wanted to follow up with a blog to match – Guts and Glory.

Glory has a number of meanings – the wiktionary indicates a couple of meanings of glory – Honour, valor and best of all the verb – to be proud.

We are proud.  We have built quite a team and yesterday was a banner day – we put 4 properties under contract – some were ours, some were one’s we sold from other brokerages.  We also put on a number of new listings.  The best part of this is the distribution – this is happening in ALL of our locations.  Properties in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Clients LOVE what we are doing.  They LOVE the fact they have the choice to save money by listing and selling their house for a low 4.5% and they are responding with their phone calls and receptiveness to Perry Wellington Realty – to try that new company who is out there with a fresh approach to selling real estate.  They don’t even have to ask or negotiate this great rate- we advertise it!

And we do sell houses.  Oh sure, we hear stories about agents who ‘suggest’ or ‘allude’ to fact that some agents won’t show a Perry Wellington Realty listing.  Nice try.  The facts certainly don’t bear that out.  I would recommend to clients that they excuse any agent who suggests this.  Those agents are part of the problem, not part of the solution.  If the agent is good at selling houses, let them stand on their positive merit and earn their fee.  Fear is a bully tactic.

Part of the pride that comes with what we are doing is that we stand for something.  We avoid dual agency (single agent representing both buyer and seller).  This is a HUGE change for consumers.  Nearly everyone we talk to appears to be hearing this for the first time.  It seems that the types of agency might not be getting across to consumers.  When you avoid dual agency like us, we spend quite a bit of time educating consumers about the types of agency.  If our agent lists your home, that agent will NOT be representing the buyer of your home.

Seems revolutionary, but it really isn’t.  It is called advocacy.  We are interested in representing you to get your best deal.  Same for buyers.  If we are helping you buy a home, we are YOUR advocate.  I have written quite a bit about this in other posts, but it is the honorable thing to do – explain how this all works even though we probably won’t make as much money when we represent one side of the transaction.  We think once clients understand this better, they won’t have it any other way.  This will be the win for us.  Slowly, over time, clients will recognize that we not only have a great rate, but the best business practices as well.

Crystal Fisher, an agent for Coldwell Banker in Altoona, has a tag line on the bottom of her emails -”Integrity – doing what’s right when nobody is watching”.  I like that.

Glory, honour, pride.  It doesn’t come easy.

Photo credit tkksummers on flickr.com

Adam Conrad is the broker/owner of Perry Wellington Realty.  Adam is the Director of Education for Advance Academy, a real estate school.  Adam is a part time lecturer at Pennsylvania State University and part time faculty for Saint Francis University.  You can reach him via email here or at Advance Academy.