Prospective home buyers can be found spending hours staring at their phones and laptops sorting and sifting through detailed listings to find that perfect home and, yet, many don’t apply the same scrutiny in selecting their real estate agent/broker. Buyer beware: Not all real estate pros are created equal.
Realtor.com reported that exactly half of buyers found the home they purchased through the internet. While research through the internet offers timely listings and sharpened search results, buyers may experience a false hope that the process is as simple as finding, buying and moving in solely through the web.
The same Realtor.com report, using 2018 data, noted 28% of buyers found their home directly through a real estate professional. And it’s reassuring to see more and more people using real estate pros for their transaction: 87% of buyers purchased their home through an agent/broker* – up from 69% in 2001.
We have found that many of those buyers who identified their home through the internet were either walking into an open house without a representative or simply contacting the person on the website associated with the home listing. That person often represents the seller – not the buyer – unless the buyer agrees to have one agent balance the two relationships in a dual agency agreement (a subject for another day).
More than simply hiring any broker as their representative, savvy buyers look for the “R” on the real estate professional’s website and marketing literature. No, that letter doesn’t represent his or her political party preference. It’s the iconic “R” logo for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which represents 1.3 million of the finest professionals in the business – people who adhere to a code of ethics deemed at a level higher than state standards.
The “R” stands for Realtor and often will be followed by the tiny ® for registered trademark.
The “R” also stands for Responsibility. NAR clearly declares the importance of “R” right there in organization’s ethics code:
The term Realtor ® has come to connote competency, fairness, and high integrity resulting from adherence to a lofty ideal of moral conduct in business relations. No inducement of profit and no instruction from clients ever can justify departure from this ideal.
It’s difficult to understand why a buyer or seller would put their faith in a real estate professional who does not follow the strictest code of conduct. But it’s the right of the buyer and seller to work with any licensed agent they wish.
The Realtor ® difference is this: Realtors ® pledge themselves to protect and promote the interests of their client and this obligation is primary while also not relieving them of their duty to honestly treat all parties.
I’m a member of NAR – as are all brokers at John L. Scott Real Estate – and I wear the “R” proudly on my jacket lapel.
Think about our pledge to the “R” and to you when thinking of partnering with a real estate pro.
* – Washington state law says “agent” means a “broker” who has entered into an agency relationship with a buyer or seller. “Broker” is the term used for both “broker” and his/her “managing broker.”
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