I watched 20/20 tonight and I came away with a few thoughts:
- I think it's very apparent that many consumers, including the reporters, don't know what Realtors do and what value they bring to the process of buying and selling a home.
- The one seller they interviewed that sold her house for $350, through FSBO.com and received multiple offers made it look easy. They did not interview any of the multitude of owners who have tried to sell their homes without a real estate agent, unsuccessfully. If they had included one of these sellers they might have provided some insights into the amount of work involved and a more balanced view into why people do choose to hire a real estate agent.
- They did interview one couple who were very pleased with their agent and thought the 6% was worth it, and they did quickly mention some of the services agents provide.
- Overall, 20/20 did provide better information than the 60 Minutes segment, however they seemed to put more emphasis on the studies and subjective thoughts from the authors of "Freakonomics", who also conducted a study on home sales in Madison Wisconsin. Unfortunately we have no specific details of this study in terms of size, study group etc. So we, the viewer, have no way to know how realistic this data is or how applicable to other markets.
- According to Levitt, one of the authors, in the future everyone will pay $500 instead of 6%.........you can formulate your own thoughts on this prediction.
- The home stager was the big winner on this show. She projected confidence and had a succinct, somewhat powerful statement that clearly articulated a stager's value.
I'm a bit perplexed......either the editing is such as to promote a certain viewpoint or the folks they are choosing to represent realtors are not doing a great job of articulating the worth of utilizing a real estate agent. Based on these particular interviews I was not impressed. Again, I recognize that the editing gods could be to blame.
Here is the link to the show! I would recommend that you read the text or watch it and try to view this from a consumer's stand point. I recognize that the show is out of date, which I think is atrocious that ABC does not address this point, but I think we can learn from it.
Instead of being annoyed or angry start working on your value statement to consumers. I know I'm working on mine. We all need to do a good job of explaining why someone should pay tens of thousands of dollars to hire a realtor.
Hope this helps those that missed the show and if you watched it, I would welcome your comments!
Thank you Marlene Bridges for pointing out that the show was 2 years old!
