Why Realtors® Suck
There are a lot of gangs in real estate — Realtors® are just the Hells’ Angels.
Part I of II
*excerpts via uncorrected proof copy of the upcoming book & tetralogy
99 Urban Real Estate Problems: Agent Edition
Gangland
The festering ignominy of the forced legal decree on agents is noticed by all. Whether real estate agents deserved the slap in the face or not, keys have been taken. The courts telling someone what to do with their club, especially this club, alters agency going forward — like everything else that lacks utility and innovation — a PowerPoint presentation with shitty fonts that’s lasted too long.
Agents aren’t the rockstars anymore — personalities and programmers, and personalities that know how to use programming are the new rock stars.
Coming from a new geek ocean of innovations, a lowly estuary has now seeped into all agent harbors and client kitchen tables. Decades of formerly protected and pocketed market share — previous Realtor® gang territory and street drip are now up for grabs, as the exiting Ozymandias’ kingdom turns to sand.
There are a lot of gangs in real estate — Realtors® are just the Hells' Angels. Esoteric pins and patches, jackets, gang colors, meetups — great people, mixed in with chuckleheads, cocaine chippers, testosterone therapy tech bros, shady ex-school teachers, and the agent army of 5–10 mg ADHD Adderall bombers. The NAR lawsuit ruling is analogous to when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” almost immediately disposed of the previous generation — incinerating the unwanted presence and genealogy, resetting all microcosms to the new real estate substrate — one with less agents and more tech to empower clients.
Tech strides have been made in recent years, but it’s worth remembering where the real estate community dropped the ball and eventually started to cannibalize its own members. The crunchy MLS data system and back end of the RE industry, is locally built and sourced by by the agents of the city, and their membership dues (about $1500 a year) and could be described as a few pixels away from the software you’d see running a flour-powdered screen in a local pizza dive.
Now, as Realtor.com has to wash dishes and lease apartments too, Jeff Goldblum and Apartments.com return the territory grab —with a knee-to-face move, now after 15 years, listing private houses, duplexes, and condos for rent, not simply public apartments.
The front-facing MLS wasn’t much better. I was asked by my local (Austin)Board of Realtors® to help redesign the MLS after throwing a firecracker behind the curtain. I sold Greystar (the world’s largest property management company) on the idea of professionally listing the majority of their massive Austin portfolio of public apartments, on the private MLS. This was a weird, and big no-no in 2015 as these world’s and streams were never, ever supposed to meet. Residential agents and locators never mixed and their markets never mixed, but both require a real estate license (unless working for one employer).
The board’s ideas about the industry and client needs were archaic, the simple leasing and pre-leasing concepts discussed took too many steps to explain.
Fast forward, now Realtor.com has to wash dishes and lease apartments too. Jeff Goldblum and Apartments.com return the favor — offering an octagon, knee-to-face territory grab by listing private homes, duplexes, and condos for rent recently, not just public apartments. Another battle lost and example of the RE industry’s bizarre pride, and decades-long blood oath against technology.
NAR and Realtors®’ legacy of bad software, bad websites, wretched client experiences, and broker greed spewing unsupervised agent werewolves all over the city has now been stopped. The tide of fresh agents looking for families to ravage with their new real estate license is on notice — a license that formerly had a fat ass pretty much guaranteed commission conveniently baked in.
Money For Nothing, Checks For Free
Over 90% of agent’s fail to renew their license. The agency career may have slipped away unnoticed like many industry roles during the pandemic.
Unfortunately for real estate agents everyone is their own MTV now (the eighties MTV). Agents are worse at marketing than technology. Cursive-handwriting font business cards, magnificent twenty plus year-old headshots are known laughing points of agency and real estate.
This is why 24 year-old urban kids are ‘doing real estate’ now on IG via selling and assigning leads. Many twenties somethings influencers using video better and are crushing the legastic brokerages in their cities. Selling leads (for more than $50) or assigning (and receiving a commission) a deal, or lead, is illegal in nearly every state, but impossible for a local board to track on international social media platforms.
Brokerages and agents on the whole were never good marketers. Or even good at being agents. Over 90% of agent’s fail to renew their license. The agency career may have slipped away unnoticed like many industry roles during the pandemic. It gave the biggest tee up to a business since potatoes and the mashing industry, to Zoom, crystallizing remote work. As brick & mortar based business are discovering, and the adage tells, ‘that toothpaste will never go back into the tube’.
The over-confident, “Brass in Pocket” agent diaspora has been notified — all British and German leases must be returned to their owner’s stable.
Going forward, the new media and martech requirements for agents are impossible.
Morlock agents and brokerages don’t see the turn coming where conventional web and apps will fall away. This change will be exponential with A.I.
Avatar-based, VR and voice-directed A.I., with host devices will form the new RE industry substrate — all your pesky chores, including real estate — done without sifting through clunky databases of repetitive low-level redundant information and Subaru ads.
I shouldn’t have been successful at real estate. I was skater. I entered the RE stream as real estate and the internet met — and in range to still hear the last of the old war stories about the Telex three-ring binder MLS printouts in trunk, Motorola Pager II days.
The cramped and highly competitive quarters of 2003 real estate offered a Spartan zing of resolve and focus, with Countrywide funding the party. After training over 350 agents in the fastest real estate market in America — Austin, Texas — this experience offered a more accurate portrait and timeline of agency career than the naive miscalculation quick agent staredom.
I caught a moment at an airport lounge bar and overheard the conversation of an airline Captain and friend discussing the new commission decision, fulcrummed on the Sherman Real Estate Antitrust Act (gangs getting together and setting market rules, pricing, consideration, quid pro quo, etc.).
The Captain thought he paid too much to his listing agent that didn’t know anything, and communicated badly. I’d heard this story for nearly two decades.
The Diamond Sea
“You can’t call it that — Why Real Estate Agents Suck.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s bitter. It’s too negative man.”
“So, what about, Why Realtors® Suck — with their little fucking realtor ‘R®’?”
“That’s even worse. That’s the trade name. Look, I know your history and I know what you’ve done in the space better than anyone, but you don’t want to come off like a ogre, or just some bitter, past middle-age fuck.”
“What if I am that thing? That deeply offensive thing you just said there — real estate agents are dumbasses. They’ve ruined my mind,” I informed my brother-in-law, jujitsu badass, surf mate, and attorney.
He continued, “Look not every agent is going to be able to have a conversation about proto-Byzantine architecture, Monet, or fucking Ruscha, but different people need different real estate agents. You think a Bosie Idaho agent needs to be able to converse about Houston drip rap, or Dogtown, or I saw Christoph Waltz pumping his own gas in his Subaru and he’s super short — but in west LA, those are normal conversations.”
“Agreed, but no one needs a dumbass real estate agent. No one says proto-Byzantine bro.”
“You’re a proto bitter old man, and you’re an agent!”
“Was,” I said. “I let my license lapse. There’s too many. And you’re ruining our ocean coffees with your emotions—look there’s some brilliant agents, but there’s also more than enough bad to talk about with all the fucking overflux of bad agents and what they’ve done over the years. And giving back commission money? It’s absolutely judicious. It’s reparations, sure now that I’m thinking about it. The ruling absolutely counterbalances decades of puppy mill brokerages flooding the streets with unsupervised agents taxing the public’s ass — practicing on them with the largest investment of their lives. There’s absolutely no other job in the world where you can handle that kind of money and importance with no experience. It’s really just decades of bad math, bad client experiences that have multiplied for 20 years. It’s not that the public doesn’t want that ride, or the agent personality — that’s 2015’s news. The new drip is they don’t even want a gatekeeper. Some of these agents on Facebook forums they can’t spell or read bro, and they’re shepherding you through a legal contract? For fucking twenty-three thousand dollars? I would be pissed too. These little motherfuckers won’t listen for shit. No hyperbole. I’ve trained more agents in the nation for a decade than anyone. I know. The real estate industry is the only industry in the world where you can have no experience and put yourself on the cover of a fake [real estate] magazine — and that’s considered okay. Like, the real estate industry has done a cover piece on you — new, with no experience. It’s a world of people that have been paid to cut your hair. But, they don’t know how to cut hair per se, but they do know how to use a pair of scissors. It’s death to the posers. Only reason it’s not perfect is it’s ten years overdue.”
We switched gears to the book — “Why don’t you call it 99 Urban Real Estate Problems.”
“It’s too long and makes me think of dalmatians and Rick Rubin.”
“Bro, Funky-”
“Funky Monks was so real bro. So real.”
“I’m in his [Anthony Kiedis’] neighborhood now in Point Dume,” I said.
Time takes its crazy toll
Mirror fallin’ off the wall
You better look out for the looking glass girl
’Cause she’s gonna take you for a fall
Sonic Youth — “The Diamond Sea”
next > Why Realtors® Suck — part II
Doom Dayz — in Malibu, not a local, neighbors clash as an overly aggressive COVID-masked neighborhood watch group consisting of Anthony Kiedis, Kenny G, and Bob Dylan coalesce. Powered by a custom fast-moving golf cart, the ad hoc death squad were attempting to catch fence hoppers and car scratchers crossing property lines to get to Little Dume (the world’s most buttery, well-shaped, best view, long riding, naturally landlocked surf break in California— where LA county ends).
