You may have heard...but things have changed in real estate recently. A Buyer Agency must now be signed before an agent can show a prospective buyer a home. Some agents have always done this, but others have wanted to establish a relationship before formal agreements. Now, the Buyer Agency is required whether you show them one home, or three, or twenty. A positive of this change: there is now a defined relationship starting on day one. You know now that the client is committed to working with you upfront and vice versa, your client has decided to work with you because you've articulated your value and they know what to expect. You, as the agent, now have a concrete value assigned to your services, whether that's paid by the buyer or seller. There is transparency up front. But how do you actually articulate your value to a prospective client? One of our agents Noah has a great tactic. He finds out the buyer's criteria on the phone before he has a buyer consultation with them in person. He then looks through our exclusives database (withheld listings through our brokerage) to identify properties that may work for the buyer that haven't hit the market yet. Last week, he actually found the perfect home for a prospective buyer that checked all the boxes. In his appointment, he's able to tell the client that by signing the buyer agency, the client would have access to view that home and make an offer before it becomes public on the market. He's not just telling people that he can find exclusive listings, he's proving his worth with tangible evidence up front. There is a direct correlation between your compensation and your contributions to the buyer-agent relationship. In the absence of value, you can only compete on price. If you want to show that you're worth a higher commission, then you have to show how you compete with value. It's true that it's more work to add more value, but your return on investment is so much greater.
