Bill McCord's Blog

There are many different Business Models in the Real Estate Industry. Here’s just a few examples:

1. Buyer Only Brokers.

2. Buyer Rebate (Kick Back) Brokers.

3. Virtual Office Brokers. No physical location.

4. Reduced Commision Brokers.

5. Fixed Price Brokers.

6. Transaction Facilitation Brokers.

Etc, etc.etc ad infinitum.

All of these and many more are proof that we have a lot of competition in our business, and that the Consumer (Buyer or Seller) has lots of choices.

I won’t try to explain the pro’s and con’s of any of these options, but will strongly suggest that whichever of them you choose you  strongly consider working with a REALTOR.

My reason for this specific advice is as follows:

1. There are more than Half a Million Licensed Real Estate Agents in California. This is the minimum required qualification for the job.

2. Only 165,000 of them are REALTORS who have voluntarily agreed to subscribe to a strict Code of Ethics, and are paying members of their Local, State, and National Associations of Realtors.

Amongst many other services Realtors provide to the public is the web site Realtor.com. the most popular of all on-line Real Estate sites. Check out http://www.realtor.com/.

Most successful Realtors know the truth of my Title (Paraphrased from ex Speaker of the House of Representatives Tip O’Neill “All politics is local”).

Unfortunately many of our clients get most of their information from the talking heads and empty suits of the mass media whose purpose is to sell advertising, with LITTLE or NO REGARD to TRUTH or CONTEXT.

They are therefore led to believe that any house can be bought for at least 20% less than a year ago, anywhere it happens to be located.

Here are a couple of facts that might be thrown into the running conversations about “How’s the market”

Over the past 10 years the average home price has INCREASED by 6.2% Nationwide.

Over the past 20 years the average home price INCREASE has been 4.7% Nationwide.

Source www.ofheo.gov

These are way below the numbers for Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley) where I live and work, and they are way above the numbers for Dallas Texas.

The Morale is “East San Jose is NOT Palo Alto. Sacramento County is NOT Santa Clara County, Southern California is NOT North California”. Florida statistics are not relevant to any other State.

ALL REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL