Thinking of a career in Real Estate?
Naperville’s official population in 2003 – 135,858
As of todays date:
There are 1837 Realtors working in Naperville Real Estate offices.
In 2005 there were 3300 real estate transactions in Naperville according to the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois. This includes houses, condos townhomes, land, rentals, deeded parking spots, mobile homes (not that there are any of those) etc…
So what does that mean? Too many agents.
When agents define their business we do so by counting sides, there are two sides to each transaction: Buyer/Seller, Lessor/Lessee etc.. This is because each side is usually represented by different agents or companies… and each is paid on this principle.
So the 3300 transactions are really 6600 sides (or 6600 transaction as viewed in the industry) 6600/1837 = 3.59 transactions per agent. Even with todays higher prices the agent at that average would have serious problems paying their dues and business expenses, much less make a living. But the reality is much worse.
Most folks like to quote the 80/20 “rule”: 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work these days those numbers would be conservative, it is widely believed that in Real Estate it’s more like 90/10. But sticking with the 80/20 “rule”:
20% of the agents = 367 agents
80% of the Transactions = 5280 transactions
or 14.3 transactions per top 20% agent
Leaving 1470 Agents to share the rest of the 1320 transactions.
What’s worse is that Naperville agents aren’t the only ones doing business in Naperville. 870 of those properties were listed by agents outside of Naperville.
Is that really what happens? No.
There are several agents in Naperville doing more than 100 transactions per year, there are also quite a few doing 50-100. So what does it mean?
There really are many agents doing little or no business. But what the stats don’t show is that the Naperville agent is also a dominant force in the surrounding towns… For example: The City of Aurora had 3849 Transactions in the same period (7689 sides) with only 370 Realtors in town… Naperville agents do a large part of the business that is available in Aurora (1376 of those properties were listed by Naperville agents… and that does not include the selling portion) They also do a large part of the business in Lisle, Bolingbrook, Plainfield, Oswego and Warrenville. Along with a scattering of business in other areas.
As of 1/31/06 there are:
1,265,569 Realtors in the World (an increase of 12.78 % from a year ago)
54,729 Realtors in Illinois (an increase of almost 10%)
California has the most Realtors with 189,063 (an increase of 15.54%)
While Idaho has only 7735 agents they experienced the largest percentage gain of 23%
Just food for thought
Marketing 101 in the Western Suburbs
Sunday, September 24th, 2006I was recently talking to another agent in the office about listings that only offer a picture of the front of the house… We agreed that we always think: ” it may be a bad agent… or it may be a bad house… I’m not really sure”
You see, in the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois (MLSNI) we can add a total of seven pictures.. as well as a virtual tour to the listing. Not everybody likes virtual tours… but pictures are something that everyone wants (buyers and agents included) It costs nothing to use this feature and it can be done at the same time as the actual listing. I was wondering what other people thought about this and posed the question to a national group of real estate agents in one of my networking groups.
These real estate agents all said that if the MLS allows 7 (or more) pictures and the listing doesn’t include that many, they assume that something is wrong with the property. This is a real problem for those sellers in a slower market and it’s one that they are generally not aware of.
One agent from Florida said that if they talk about the pool in the remarks but don’t show a picture they assume that something is not right with the pool.
Another top agent said they definitely make assumptions based on the amount or lack of pictures. Like if the agent only uses interior pictures (or exterior only)
Of the 17 responses to my question 17 (100%) of the agents responded that they assume the worst when photos are not used properly……
One other thought is that these pictures automatically propogate throughout the system, showing up on real estate related sites all over the Internet (assuming that the agent elects to do that…that will be another marketing blog topic!) including Realtor.com if the agent pays a little extra for the expanded listings.
Sometimes it’s what you don’t say (or show) that influences people..
Posted in Marketing, Real Estate, Sellers | No Responses »
Tags: Real Estate Commentary, Sellers, Tips