I heard a term from a women I worked for back in 2001, “listing hounds”. Without prodding from me she went to describe the “hounds” as real estate licensees who get a volume of listings and then just “stick them in a drawer”. Her point was that certain licensees focus solely on getting as many listings as possible without any regard for providing any significant level of service. Listings are the lifeblood of real estate, providing inventory and helping the supply side of the supply and demand equation. But, a blind and greedy desire to gobble up as many listings as possible can leave an agent with a large personal inventory of listings and no realistic ability to provide a decent level of service to all of the individual clients. While the number of listings each agent can handle will vary every agent should be honest with themselves about the question “How many listings can I effectively handle?”. They will do themselves, their clients and the entire industry a favor. If you are shopping for an agent to list your home beware of the agent that talks of their assistant and how they are able to handle so many listings because of their wonderful assistant. This may be true. There are many wonderful real estate agent assistants out there. My experience over the last 15 years, observing “listing hounds” is that many have a high turn over of these assistants. They ate typically not licensed and, in Florida, if unlicensed, there are strict laws regard what they can and cannot do. This is an important consideration. Suppose you employ an agent to list your house, the agent already has 30 listing and the agent’s assistant quits the same day that you sign your listing contract. There is going to be some chaos as the agent scrambles to hire and train a new assistant.
As this blog is mainly designed to help the layperson understand the ins and outs of the real estate industry, I hope that anyone looking to list their home finds the information above helpful.
Barry Trammell, Broker/owner, Trammell Realty, http://www.trammellrealtyfl.com/