You May Not Need an Agent…
It’s true. Your neighbor may walk across the street and offer to purchase your home for your ideal selling price. You might place an ad on Craigslist or one of the many discount internet brokers and land a well qualified buyer quickly. Seriously, these things happen every day. For anyone who doesn’t need professional guidance in marketing, negotiation, and valuation a licensed real estate agent is unnecessary. There are plenty of people who don’t have the specific skills in these areas necessary to sell their home for the greatest possible price in the shortest possible time. That’s our mission.
If You Do Need an Agent Why Choose Us?
Our team of full-time experienced real estate agents bring the highest level of knowledge, technology tools, and professionalism to your real estate transaction. Five percent of the real estate agents in North Texas sell over 90% of the homes. Several of our agents are in the top 2% of North Texas agents in individual closed transaction count.
A new development in the real estate industry is the use of “Mega-Teams” to produce large volumes of listings and sales under a single agent’s name. This model has been successfully used by many “Mega-Agents” across the country to build their individual brands and to add an incredible record of sales to their resume. This is a very effective practice that produces great income for the agent at the top and entry-level experience and income for new or less experienced agents beneath them. The prospective buyer responds to the listing agent’s marketing, visits over the phone – or briefly in person with the Mega Agent.. and then never sees or hears from them again. After the initial contact, the client is turned over to a successive team of listing specialists, transaction coordinators, showing agents, showing assistants, and others until a buyer closes on the sale. In theory it sounds great.. each member of the team is a specialist in their specific area of responsibility. A few teams across the nation do a very reasonable job with this model, but for others the story is different. Because members often join a Mega-Team because they are new agents or have had difficulty developing a client base on their own they are often inexperienced.
Our Agents Work in Small Teams or Independently to Sell Your Home Quickly & Efficiently
Our full-time agents serve all of the most favored residential communities in North Texas. The advantages of listing your home with a local boutique brokerage like Fort Worth Texas Real Estate instead of one of the national franchise companies are many. First, our agents are truly independent. By not paying 20-50 percent of their commission income to their corporate broker they have more available marketing dollars to devote to the sale of your home. Secondly, our brokerage supports the agent with technology tools and resources to make them the best in the industry. Other companies make the same claim but at FWTRE we really deliver for our clients by treating our agents with respect and supporting them in their individual real estate practices.
Franchised real estate companies advertise to attract listings not buyers
Too often our industry puts out a disingenuous message to consumers that we are in the business of “selling homes.” While not to underemphasize the importance of the selling process, most successful agents spend the majority of their time, energy and budget searching for homes to LIST than they do looking for buyers. National franchised brokerages help agents get more listings, not to sell more homes. Working for a national franchise brand helps agents bag listings because the brand’s entire business purpose is to create the impression among SELLERS that they have a unique marketing advantage over other real estate brands in your neighborhood. That’s why big real estate companies spend the lion’s share of their advertising budgets to attract listings, not to attract buyers. Because sellers pay the commissions this expense is passed on to them.
But what about For Sale ads in Luxury-oriented magazines? Don’t they matter?
Interestingly it’s those pages and pages of listings which they publish at great expense in the area’s luxury magazines that are aimed directly at potential sellers and NOT at potential buyers. Think about the lead-time required to get your home in a luxury magazine. Most good agents will have already sold the home by the time the magazine is even distributed. What’s more, 97% of home buyers now find their home online, not in the pages of a magazine like they might have in 1980. So why should you pay a higher commission to pay for this out-dated service?
Where your commission money goes…
When you pay a big national franchised brokerage firm 6% to sell your home they typically offer half of that to the agent who brings the buyer. Of the remaining 3% the brokerage generally takes between 36% and 55% to pay for overhead, administrative staff, office expenses, corporate profit and marketing. Nearly 100% of that marketing goes to seek more listings not to sell current listings. The remaining commission goes to your agent who must pay for actual selling expenses like signs, lockboxes, internet listing enhancements, direct mail, etc. What’s left over, usually less than 1% represents the agent’s income before other expenses and taxes. When agents become really good they often become less satisfied with this arrangement and leave to either open or work in an independent boutique brokerage. These brokerages allow an agent to concentrate on listing a smaller quantity of homes, offer more individual service and achieve greater results for their client – earning greater income for themselves in the process.
What kind of company do you want to list your home with?
Again, it is ultimately about the skills and qualifications of the agent and not the company that they work for, whether that company is franchised OR independent. Successful independent agents usually began their careers with a national franchise brokerage because these brokerages do provide listings in many cases and often have the training resources that a new agent needs. When they leave the big firm to open their own they must decide whether they will operate like a smaller version of the industry giants, spending one third to one half of the commission proceeds to support overhead and generate more listings or if they will cut those costs out of the mix and either retain them as profit or return them to the client in the form of lower commissions and fees.
At Fort Worth Texas Real Estate we provide the highest level of expertise, commitment and diligence to produce expected results for our clients, but we don’t charge our clients for anything that does not actually benefit them. Our clients can sell their homes with higher net proceeds and our agents earn more from each and every transaction than the typical agent in our market. That’s how we attract the very best and most capable independent-spirited agents in Fort Worth. Our agents are free to set their own commissions and they do so based upon their own individual criteria, this is not allowed by many corporate national agencies. You will find both great value and superior results from your representation by a Fort Worth Texas Real Estate agent.
Although there are clear distinctions between good agents and inferior ones regarding their sales techniques, the majority of active successful agents do pretty much the same things to sell homes, and most of these things are very simple and often very automated. They don’t require much time to accomplish.
- stunning professional online photographs of your home
- professional staging
- compelling and fresh content for the MLS, Social Media and direct mail
- premium placement in Internet search portals
- effective social media marketing to both prospective buyers and their agents
- tools in place to facilitate showings and collection of feedback from buyers.
Beyond the basic sales tools a great agent will have expertise in your neighborhood, a proven track record of successful sales, excellent proven negotiation skills and availability to meet with you or any prospective buyer on short notice. Our experienced full-time agents offer guaranteed results.
Browse our Agent’s Individual Websites and Call One of them Today!
