Let’s examine what happens when a hot new listing gets taken by one of the big real estate teams in 2019.
What qualifies as a hot listing?
I think we can say that 70% to 80% of listings are priced at full retail or higher, so the rest are either priced attractively or have unique features that propel them into the ‘hot’ category – great location, newer, remodeled, one-story, etc.
First, let’s note that the leaders of the big real estate teams have hired several newby agents to carry the load. The leaders do their best to train and supervise, but once the system is up and running, everyone gets too busy to pay much attention to how the sausage is made.
The lead agent takes the hot new listing, and hands it off to the assistants.
- They start the selling process with the Coming Soon round, which lasts for days or weeks. While the bosses intend this to be a pre-marketing campaign, if a buyer contacts the assistant-squad during the Coming Soon period and wants to buy it….well, then, heck – let’s make a deal. If an outside agent wants to show or sell it, they are told to wait until it’s on the open market.
- If the Coming Soon round is unsuccessful, then the listing goes into the MLS and onto the open market. The quality of the remarks and photos can tell you a lot. If they are brief, it’s another sign that the squad is trying to couch the listing so outsiders might miss it.
- Now the games begin. This happened to me this week. Following the showing instructions, I call and text the agent, but no response. I persist, and finally catch a squad member answering the phone. He says “the occupant needs more notice to show”, even though I had begun my inquiry six hours prior, to which there was no response. He says he’ll get back to me once he can schedule something with the occupant. This goes on for two days, until he finally answers his phone again…..and you know what’s coming. “Oh, we just accepted an offer on that one!”
The team leader insulates himself from the gritty details by not publishing his phone number. For showings, they list a separate phone number in the MLS so they know it’s an agent calling. Then the squad gets just a little too busy to call back those inquiries.
The seller has no clue how the squad’s actions denied him the chance to get more offers – heck, he’s just glad it sold quick. The broker doesn’t supervise that closely and really doesn’t want to know, and the team leader looks the other way, because this was part of the recruiting process to build the squad, and take more vacation.
I changed my phone to the 858 area code because I couldn’t get a call back from a La Jolla or Rancho agent to a 760 number.
I also call these squads from different phones, and no call gets answered with a hot listing.
Would you say the team structure makes it easier to orchestrate this compared to a lone agent? What percentage of super-teams would you guess engage in this?
All of these tricks just seem like a way to double end the deal and prevent splitting the commission with another agent, the buyer’s agent.
Or perhaps “coming soon” is also a technique some sellers use to ensure only the “right” buyer buys their house? I.E. keep the neighborhood a certain character and keep the undesirables out?
Would you say the team structure makes it easier to orchestrate this compared to a lone agent?
No, it’s just easier to look the other way with more people involved. I’ve had both lone agents and team leaders tell me to my face that they do it, and it doesn’t occur to them that anything is wrong. It just how the business works.
What percentage of super-teams would you guess engage in this?
All are tempted. Ethics is what happens when no one is looking.
Thanks for the reply. Could DRE come down on this? If so, maybe through sting operations?
Could DRE come down on this?
Hard to prove it was a deliberate act. Someone might get fired for being a bumbling idiot, but that’s about it.
I saw the stat again yesterday – half the leads realtors get (and pay for) never get a call back.
It all get justified by the age-old saying, “I can only sell it once”.
All of these tricks just seem like a way to double end the deal and prevent splitting the commission with another agent, the buyer’s agent.
Now it’s specifically to feed the good leads/easy deals to the squad so they stick around longer.
In my honest opinion and experience the DRE is irrelevant to any issue involving ethics. Casey Serin after a name change is a real estate salesman these days.
In my honest opinion and experience the DRE is irrelevant to any issue involving ethics. Casey Serin after a name change is a real estate salesman these days.
The DRE/NAR/MLS/etc can’t/won’t do anything about this topic, because it is individual ethics. Are team leaders and brokers going to allow it to happen? They are the ones in the trenches who can do something.
Did I mention that the lead DRE attorney Gov told a room of us that the Coming Soons were a local issue, and up to the brokers? Brokers say it’s up to the MLS, and the MLS says it’s up to the brokers. People are pointing every which way!
Another common tactic to slow down outside agents is when the listing agents insist on agents notifying them of the desire to show their listing, even if the house is vacant and/or on lockbox.
Not to book an appointment, just to let them know – and they say ‘don’t show the house until you hear back from me’. And then they don’t respond.
Great post, Jim. I’m learning a lot. How do you get “good help” if you’re not in Encinitas?
You gotta ask a lot of questions, and call into the phone room yourself to see how they handle.
If you are really interested in this specific concern, I guess you could call and say you are an agent and see if they handle it differently. But if they use a different phone number for agents (or just list the general phone number for the whole office of 100s of agents), you’d only know that from seeing the MLS live or on a MLS listing sheet.
Another example of what agents do to their clients – this one with more zeros on it:
According to the documents, the government seized the Malibu-based estate from Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who struck a deal with the Department of Justice in 2014 to have the sale benefit the people of Equatorial Guinea.
Umansky and The Agency were hired in 2015 to sell the property.
But Sweetwater Malibu alleges that Umansky deceived them into selling the mansion to manipulate his full 6 percent commission when a man named Mauricio Oberfeld bought it for $32.5 million.
“Defendants violated virtually every one of these duties, by engaging in blatant acts of self-dealing, earning secret profits, and both failing to disclose and outright misrepresenting material facts,” the documents alleged. “Among other things, they advised Sweetwater to accept an offer from another client and partner Mauricio Oberfeld, without disclosing that they knew that a far higher price could have been obtained, Oberfeld would need to obtain financing or investors in order to close the purchase, despite purporting to offer an ‘all cash’ deal without the need for financing. Defendants were secretly working for Oberfeld to find him buyers and investors to complete the purchase, and Defendants had been offered secret compensation from buyers they recommended, and favored offers from their other existing clients.”
They then claimed that “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” husband teamed up with Oberfeld to flip and resell the property for $69.9 million a year later.
https://pagesix.com/2019/03/14/mauricio-umansky-husband-of-kyle-richards-sued-over-32m-mansion/