Carolyn Enlow

It is surprising how many borrowers don't understand loan structures, interest and principal payouts. It frequently gets lost in the qualifying and tax issues. In these uncertain times we try to educate buyers to influence them toward thirty year loans with payments below their highest qualification and ability, then to make extra payments each month when they can. Even those buyers that do understand the "front loaded interest" issue are seldom aware of the huge impact of making extra principal payments each month. In the $100,000, 6%, 30 year example above the buyer is paying $116,000 in interest over the loan term. By simply paying an extra $100 a month toward their principal they would reduce their interest by 35% or $40,000 and be done with the loan in 21 years instead of being half-done.

Interesting article, Marc. Yes, the web is a wasteland of ineffective real estate sites. And yes, the agents and sites could be more effective. And yes, good blogs do work better for personal branding than most of the agent/agency sites. And no, there does not seem to be a sense of what a contemporary website should be. And yes, there are far too many platitudes and hyped promises. However I’m not sure that condemnation helps much and I feel that blogs are an answer to a different question. In a very broad sense, agent and agency blogs should be where personalities are exposed and familiarity established. In contrast, websites should be where brands, properties and communities are exposed and promoted. At least that is today’s common perception by searchers, agents, buyers and sellers. Agents face a tough dilemma. They have to please their broker, their sellers and the potential buyers. They have to do this as part of a pool of agents within an agency which they are generally considered interchangeable shift workers. The brokers face their own dilemmas. They must differentiate themselves from the agency down the street while not outshining their own individual agents. They also must meet the needs and demands of experienced high producing agents while protecting those agents in development. In most cases the agency site is competing with a mishmash of private agent sites maintained by their own agents. Agents and agencies are both struggling to get and hang on to listings at the same time they are searching for buyers for those properties. In many cases those listing platitudes, i.e.: “dream homes,” are necessary to maintain listings as sellers become discouraged over today’s long selling cycle. The agents can be as frustrated by their sellers’ descriptive demands as you are critical of them. Because of their open and singular nature agent and agency websites are asked to do much more than any single site should be asked to do. By their very nature they can’t do more than one service really well. That’s not to say that they couldn’t be better. Unfortunately we haven’t seen a good website model or seminar out there for the agents and brokers to learn from or to model on. We operate a regional single-purpose real estate site. Our singular aim is to attract buyers for homes and residential lots in the central Sierras of California. We have about twenty five agencies we work with along the Sierra foothills. The site, www.sierrascenic.com does not promote us nor does it mention our affiliated agents or agencies. It simply focuses on showing homes in the searched-on community. Because we are in regular daily contact with our client agencies we get a feeling for our results. We place several referrals every day. Almost without exception the referral managers within our client agencies say we are providing more quality clients than their company site, their agent sites and their national affiliations. I don’t think that happens because we are particularly good… we do a terrible job on SEO placement, for example… but because we are singularly focused on showcasing the scenic nature of our clients’ listings. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds as the agencies and agents learn to optimize their web presence. How will they balance the need to brand? They are paying 6-8% franchise fees for that national brand, so they can’t ignore it. And they have their local agency brand reputation that must be promoted as well. How will agencies please their best listing and selling agents so they don’t leave? How will agents please their sellers as they ask for listing extension after listing extension? How will all concerned… agents, agencies and MLSs, catalog, sort and provide informative targeted responses to potential buyers without overwhelming, frustrating or confusing them to the point that they hit the back button? Yes, Marc, your criticism is very valid. But it would be well to have some sympathy for these poor agents and agencies. They are not ignorant of the problem. We talk to them every day. They agonize over the same issues, they try different approaches, but no clear answer has evolved yet.