Guess what? Zillow is entering the San Diego residential real estate market and Realtors should take it seriously:
Zillow Offers is continuing its expansion, announcing Monday it will be buying and selling homes in San Diego. Through its iBuying service, Zillow seeks to provide a solution by enabling sellers to forget about the hassle of cleaning their home, forgoing home repairs, open houses, and the like. They can even choose the date they want to sell and move by. (For more on what, exactly, is an iBuyer, read this.)
I know. I know. Zillow is no competition for a professional, local expert...or is it? What San Diego Realtors often miss is that, while iBuyers may "low-ball" sellers, looking for homes with cosmetic repairs needed, the simple fact is that the iBuyers end up negotiating with sellers long before an agent has a chance to prsent his/her services. Here is my friend, Phoenix real estate broker Greg Swann:
As for iBuyers being nothing to worry about: Ahem.
If they’re in your town, they’re in your potential-seller’s head – and maybe in his email in-box, too. They’re in everyone’s net.world, on billboards, radio, TV. If your prospect hasn’t solicited an offer yet, you need to get out in front of that eventuality.
The iBuyers are the elephant in the room at your listing appointment. If the seller doesn’t bring them up, you had better. It could be that iBuyer offers are already in play, so you may already be smoked. Or the seller may want your help going that way, in which case you just made the easiest money in your real estate career – although the party to whom you owe fiduciary duty may have just pissed away half or more of his accrued equity in the home. Or, god help you, he may want to be sold on the value of listing traditionally.
But to go in to a listing appointment assuming the listing is your to lose is a mistake, I think. In the iBuyer world, the listing is theirs to lose, yours to win. You got the appointment because the seller wants your advice, not because he wants your sign in his yard for six months.
Greg has done extensive research on just how poorly iBuyers perform and you should follow what he's doing. More importantly, read the emboldened statement Greg made. I'll parse it for you here:
You got the appointment because the seller wants your advice, not because he wants your sign in his yard for six months
Realtors need a strategy to position themselves as a trusted advisor so that their clients contact them before the iBuyers do. Gary Keller said, some 15 years ago, that Realtors are either going to be fiduciaries enabled by technology or functionaries working for technology. Thus, San Diego Realtors are going to have to examine the way they charge clients for the knowledge, advice, and expertise. For too long, Realtors have relied on the commission model ad the only way to charge for their services. Developing a "menu of services", which includes pre-MLS solicitation of iBuyer offers seems like the only way to get ahead of the curve.
