CAPED CRUSADER TRYING TO SAVE AGENTS

CAPED CRUSADER TRYING TO SAVE AGENTS
Sellers, be on the lookout for this rort.


By a Guest Writer.

Picture the scene: A meeting of slovenly agents grumbling about sellers who refuse to fork out thousands of dollars in upfront advertising charges.

"One of my vendors reckoned he was paying me twice for the same job - once with the advertising fees and a second time with the commission," says the agent with the gold chain resting on his beer gut. "The cheek of the bloke."

Murmurs of agreement around the table.

"I had a seller tell me she wasn't going to pay me the $5,000 upfront for advertising, 'cos I hadn't done any work yet," says the agent in the scruffy slip-on shoes. "Where do they get the gall?"

Howls of outrage from the mob.

"What're we gunna do?" whines the power-dressed lady agent. "I refuse to even try to sell a house without money upfront for newspaper advertising. It's ... it's ... it's just not done."

Suddenly, a flash of smoke and drum rolls - enter the caped crusader, Enzo the Magnificent. "I know what to do," he booms. "I'll save you."

It's fiction of course, but meetings such as these go on all the time in real estate, especially lately and especially in Melbourne. How do we know? Because shameless propaganda about advertising has been appearing in newspapers around Victoria under the byline of Enzo Rainmondo of the REIV.

If you want to defend the indefensible, Enzo's your man. If you want someone who can keep a straight face while imparting more spin than a Shane Warne flipper, look no further.

"Advertising is an essential part of marketing campaign to sell real estate," declares the fearless Enzo, under a headline which shouts: "Advertising's all-powerful for vendors."

There's no louder noise in real estate than the voice of self-interest. And Enzo moves quickly on to the main point of his newspaper column. "Advertising places an immediate obligation on the seller because agents must make immediate payment for the advertisement," he writes.

This, in case you missed it, is an argument for agents hitting home sellers for thousands of dollars in upfront fees, before the agents have done any work.

"It must be stressed that advertising expenditure incurred on behalf of the sellers and authorised by them is the vendor's own responsibility," continues the shameless Enzo.

But he isn't finished. "Commission should not be confused with authorised advertising when a financial obligation starts immediately and exists irrespective of whether the property is sold."

What he's trying to defend here is the indefensible notion that sellers must pay thousands of dollars even if the agent has failed to find a buyer.

Perhaps the key issue is this: when Enzo and his pals speak of "advertising" they mean newspaper advertising. And when newspapers publish his propaganda, they are betraying their own self-interest. Both newspapers and agents benefit from pushing the line that homes cannot be sold without big, expensive ads in newspapers.

In the twenty-first century, thousands of buyers no longer trawl through the jumble of ads in newspapers.

They go first to the Internet, a far more practical means of finding homes for sale. The newspaper industry itself knows this, which is why the two biggest real estate web sites are owned by major newspaper companies.

The owners of domain.com.au and realestate.com.au claim that over two million people now visit their web sites every month - up from 1.3 million a year ago. The pre-eminence of Internet marketing in real estate these days (it's also far cheaper than newspaper advertising) is well known.

Yet industry "leaders" like Enzo Raimondo continue to peddle the fiction that newspaper advertising - paid for in advance by sellers -is essential for selling a home.

Fortunately, more and more sellers realise they're being ripped off with advertising - and are making their views known to agents.

Hence, the surge in the spin about "all powerful advertising".


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This article was taken from the Articles page of the Jenman website.

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