The answer is almost never!

Think about it… The home seller wants the highest sales price and the buyer wants the lowest.

Letting the same agent represent both sides of the transaction is like having the same attorney represent both the plaintiff and defendant in a legal case.

Known in the industry as “double-ending”, the idea is that by having only one agent involved, the transaction can be done more easily with everybody benefiting financially.

Today’s consumer can find most for sale homes on the internet. The logic goes that by working directly the listing agent (with no buyer’s agent involved), some or all of the buyer’s agent commission can be credited to the buyer in the form of a reduced price.

But it rarely works that way.

How does the buyer know he didn’t overpay? How does the seller know he didn’t undersell? Plus, good listing agents would far prefer another agent earn the buy-side commission for doing the buy-side work than to give commission to an unrepresented buyer.  

In this hot seller’s market there is lots of press about unscrupulous listing agents using the lure of a pocket listing to attract buyers so as to keep both sell and buy side commissions. At Top Agent Network, we feel that using pre-MLS or pocket listings this way is wrong and bad for everybody.

When a Top Agent Network member posts an upcoming MLS or pocket listing on TAN they are sharing it with the verified top 10% producing real estate agents; those who sell 3 out of 4 homes in their market. Posting the property to fellow TAN members virtually eliminates any chance of double-ending the sale and is in the best interest of their sellers. As a bonus, the posting member agent builds his or her collaborative relationships with other top agents in their local marketplace.

To be clear, we find no issue with two different agents working for the same brokerage choosing to represent the buyer and seller of the same property. Regardless of their brokerage affiliation, nearly every real estate agent is an independent contractor and will strongly represent their client’s interests. Agents cooperating with other real estate agents is central to the real estate sales process.

As a broker myself, I can tell you from personal experience that the two times I double-ended a home sale, nobody was happy with the outcome.

If you try to burn the candle at both ends you are bound to get burned in the middle!

The post Double-ending Real Estate Deals – Don’t Do It! appeared first on Top Agent Network.

Clients want to know Can You:

• Find me that special home?
• Help me buy for a lower price?
• Sell my house for a higher price?
• Make the process less of a hassle?
• Give me a real competitive advantage in this tough market?

As a member of Top Agent Network, you can do all these things better.

TAN member agents are rightfully proud of their membership. Across the county, tons of members display their TAN logo and mention their membership in their website and advertisements. Even more talk about TAN in listing presentations, often providing clients with a copy of their membership certificate.

Unlike self-proclamations, Top Agent Network objectively verifies you truly are a top producing real estate agent. Even more important to the client, as a member you can provide your clients with inside leads on valuable real estate information available nowhere else.

On his website, San Francisco member Payton Stiewe provides a fabulous summary of the benefits to clients in working with a Top Agent Network agent.

It makes sense for top agents to share information about upcoming properties because, statistically, agents ranked in the top 10% of a market do 75% of the business. Top agents help each other provide the very best client services possible—and in the process, make more sales. Benefits to our clients are huge. We can market our listings before the “days on the market” ticker begins, often creating buzz and generating offers before a home is even listed. For our buyers, we find out about listings before the general public, as well as before 90% of the agent community.

View Payton’s Webpage

As a member, Top Agent Network automatically creates a personal page for you on our public website. (View Payton’s TAN page). Members can update their TAN public page from My Account.

Our mission is to help members attract and retain excellent clients and sell more homes, more easily. To that end, we are working on a consumer version of the new TAN video for members to share in their client presentations.

The post This Real Estate Agent Knows How to Brag Properly appeared first on Top Agent Network.

Silence can be golden… and very telling.

I own real estate. And, just like any property owner, I want to get the most money when I sell it.

About a year and a half ago, I became interested in selling my Sausalito, California duplex, if I got the “right” price. (You’ve heard sellers say that before!) Cautious not to bother my excellent tenants with MLS showings, I posted it on Top Agent Network as a Non-MLS/Pocket listing for $1,500,000.

The Marin County chapter of Top Agent Network is one of TAN’s most active and a virtual “who’s who” of the area’s highest producing agents. Certainly, some top agent would have a buyer for the property!

The response to my post? Total silence. No emails. No phone calls. Not even a text. 

Yep, I was bummed about that—until I realized that no response was telling me a lot. I knew that every post on TAN is emailed to all verified top 10% real estate agents in any chapter area. The lack of agent response to my post was screaming to me that the current market was not ready for a duplex in Sausalito priced at $1,500,000. Boy, was I glad I didn’t put it in the MLS and mess with my tenants!

So, if your “Motivated Buyer” post on TAN gets little response, the market is simply telling you there aren’t owners interested in selling the kind of property you seek at the price your buyers are offering. Similarly, if your “Pre-MLS/Non-MLS” listing post gets little response, you are probably asking too much for it. How great to know this before going on the MLS!

Instead of you being the “bad guy” who doesn’t “believe in them or their property”, objectively share the market feedback you get from your TAN post with your clients. The clients might just surprise you and get more realistic about their list price or purchase criteria.

At worst, you can reduce the time you spend with dead-end buyers and sellers.

After all, you work in real estate for a living, don’t you?

The post Use a Post’s Low Response To Get Your Clients To Be Real appeared first on Top Agent Network.

I recently received a short video blog (less than 4 minutes) from Bruce Koren of City Marketing with some super-cool smartphone productivity tips. These tips were so easy and useful to me that I asked Bruce to make a special video just for Top Agent Network members.

Enjoy!

The post Tell Your Smartphone What To Do appeared first on Top Agent Network.

This wave of launches expands TAN’s footprint in the Northeast beyond the core Metro Boston chapters we launched in January: Metro Boston, Boston Metro North and Boston Metro West/Route 128. Route 128 and I-495 are concentric highways to the west of Boston, yielding different commute patterns, lifestyles and housing needs, thus our decision to separate out Boston’s Metro West into two different chapters. The exchange on TAN is all local, local, local!

Calling all Charter Members

Agents in these new Boston chapter areas whose past two-year sales put them in the top 5% of their regions are eligible to become Charter Members of these new chapters. A very limited number of charter member positions are available and will be assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Charter membership extends special introductory savings and significant marketing/promotional benefits that only grow in stature as a chapter builds. Agents interested in Charter Membership should contact Membership Director Suzanne Crawford to learn more.

TAN’s expansion into the greater Boston area will be complete next month with the April 29 launch of TAN’s last 3 Boston chapters: North Shore, South Shore and Cape & The Islands. After that… the Windy City!

The post 3 More TAN Chapters Launched Beyond the Metro Boston Core appeared first on Top Agent Network.

Well, even we at Top Agent Network are not immune to technology becoming its own comedian!

To assist qualified agents in signing up for TAN membership, our system automatically generates random codes for the qualified agent to input into the registration page. Rather than a forgettable string of numbers, the random codes are pronounceable syllables.

While the vast majority of these randomly generated codes are mundane things like “gariza” or “medi,” sometimes the system creates weird combinations. And sometimes, they are downright embarrassing!

We certainly hope codes like “dumbas” or “hackjob” are never randomly generated.

Our CTO, John Hampton, explains the system:

We generate a random number then use a library to make a conversion to letters. The codes aren’t words at all. Rather, the library is based on Japanese syllables. So… sometimes we get unfortunate combinations. The idea was to give us a code that can be communicated more easily than something like dj389kms.

One time the system generated the code “puke”!  Both the receiving agent and we had a good laugh over that one!

So if you got a slightly off-color registration code, please know that we did not pick it. It was just the computer being a prankster!

What funny things has your computer or smartphone done to you?

The post When Your Computer (or Smartphone) Becomes a Prankster appeared first on Top Agent Network.

The topic made me curious. Has this hot market reduced the frequency of Pre-MLS (upcoming) and Non-MLS (pocket) posts on Top Agent Network? Why announce your upcoming or pocket listing when the MLS is doing such a great job in generating activity?

To answer this question, we compared Pre- and Non-MLS posts as a percentage of all posts on TAN in January 2013 vs. January 2012.

Despite the hot market, the combined percentage of Pre-MLS and Non-MLS posts remained exactly the same it was a year ago. 

So why are members still sharing their Upcoming and Pocket listings in such a hot market?

Helps you win listings. With declining inventory, listings are like “gold”. Agents are aggressively pursuing potential sellers who are asking, “What special thing will you do to get me top dollar?” Any agent can put a listing on the MLS. But TAN agents can answer, “Pre-market to the proven best agents in the area. By pre-marketing on TAN, we’ll generate extra interest in your property and maximize your chance of finding the most motivated and highest paying buyers.”

Don’t miss the boat! Springtime brings more listing inventory. Plus, interest rates are bound to increase above today’s record lows. Either event will make it more challenging to sell a home—and make the marketing options available through TAN even more important.

Many sellers are just not ready to go on the MLS. They may need time to get the home fixed up, staged and photographed. Or perhaps, the seller is only willing to sell if he can get an extraordinary price and wants to test the waters. Member agents can breeze through these situations by posting Pre- and Non-MLS listings on TAN.

It pays to help your competitors. In real estate, intense competitors must collaborate to be successful. Unless you cooperate with other top agents in your market, you rarely get paid. It’s the nature of the game. Did you know that the top 10% producing agents are involved in 75% of the closed sales in your market area? Sharing the inside scoop with these agents is good for them AND good for you. Read: Co-opetition: Why Would Competitors Help Each Other?

Are you going the extra mile by posting your Pre-MLS and Non-MLS listings to your top peers on Top Agent Network? How has it helped your sellers?

The post Competitive Advantage: Pre- and Non-MLS Listings Remain Strong in Tight Real Estate Market appeared first on Top Agent Network.

What a difference a year makes! 

Since a year ago, the economy has improved only slightly (a trend that began in 2009) and interest rates have remained largely unchanged. Yet, across the country, home prices are rising rapidly with lots of properties selling WAY over asking price. I recently heard of a very average home getting 33 offers!

So why has it suddenly turned into such a massive homesellers’ market?

The answer comes down to “Economics 101” — Supply vs. Demand.

From Austin to Boston to Long Island to Los Angeles, there are simply far fewer homes for sale. In San Francisco, the number of homes listed for sale has dropped a whopping 68% in just a year! Less supply and the same (or increasing) demand is driving the market.

Source: Redfin (TAN current and coming-soon chapters in pink)

Some Top Agent Network members tell us they have never seen so many anxious and disappointed buyers looking for houses. One agent mentioned a listing that received 20 offers with 19 of those offers being ALL CASH!

So why is inventory so low and why aren’t more owners selling in this hot market? The top agents we spoke with cite these reasons: 

1. All cash investors are scooping up lots of properties.
2. Owners are reluctant to formally list their property for fear they won’t find a suitable replacement home.
3. Some owners are still waiting for prices to return to 2006-2008 levels before they will put their home on the MLS for sale.

All the agents we spoke with said they have listings in the queue for release this spring. That should improve the demand-supply imbalance and temper the market a bit. If I were an active real estate agent I would advise my sellers to jump on this hot seller’s market before it cools. They can even be a little greedy on price.

Got a listing in the pipeline? Seize the opportunity to let your fellow top agents know about your Pre-MLS and Non-MLS listings while inventory is so low!

What’s happening in your market?

The post Where Did All the Homes For Sale Go? appeared first on Top Agent Network.

Nothing beats storytelling—just about everyone enjoys a good story.

Buyers (and sellers) are looking for you as their real estate agent to tell them the story of the town, the neighborhood, or the house for sale.

A powerful (and free) way to tell stories online is via Storify.com. Storify allows one to weave together strands of social media (photos and videos and posts and links) to tell a story.

I have put Storify to work to tell the stories of the neighborhoods of my marketplace – Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. You can see my Storify stories at CambridgeandSomervilleMA.com.

For example, check out my Mid Cambridge neighborhood story at DiscoverMidCambridge.com (I have linked each of my stories to an easy to remember URL). This story opens with my description of Mid Cambridge and weaves together the following:

• Photos of houses (some of which are my listings)
• A neighborhood map
• A link to my blog posts on Mid Cambridge
• My YouTube videos of Mid Cambridge
• My Flickr photos of Mid Cambridge
• My Mid Cambridge Tumblr posts
• Links or posts by others about neighborhood establishments, like the public library.

What’s great about Storify is that the story you create is not set in stone. Add or subtract elements to the story at any time, and reorder as you wish. I am constantly recreating my stories.

I have also used Storify to tell the story of the neighborhood of a listing – see DiscoverFranklinSquare.com.

Everyone is now a reporter. Storify gives a real estate agent the opportunity to shine as a knowledgeable and informed source of information. Start storifying online today at Storify.com. The possibilities are endless!

Charles Cherney (VP Hammond Real Estate) is a Harvard graduate, local Cambridge resident and top real estate broker in Cambridge & Somerville, MA since 1999. 

The post Tell Me a Story appeared first on Top Agent Network.

Freeways. School systems. Lifestyles. The average home sale price per town. Natural geographic boundaries. County boundaries. Commutes. These are just some of the things we analyze when launching chapters of Top Agent Network in large, metropolitan regions. Why?

We’ve learned that for the information exchange on TAN to be truly valuable, the chapters must be defined up front to match how real estate is conducted in the area. For instance, a San Francisco real estate agent rarely needs to know nor cares about listings in Palo Alto—yet from looking at a map of the Bay Area, one might not necessarily know that. Making these judgment calls accurately is fundamental to successful chapter dynamics, yet not always easy from thousands of miles away!

Concluding months of dogged effort working alongside several of Boston’s very top agents, we have arrived at chapter definitions for the Boston metropolitan area that we believe best reflect how local residents live, breathe and buy homes in Boston. We’re excited to be rolling out these chapters beginning this week, and continuing on through the spring:

Metro Boston
Includes: Boston
Launch date: January 22

Boston Metro North
Includes: Arlington, Belmont, Cambridge, Medford, Somerville, Watertown, Winchester
Launch date: January 22

Boston Metro West/Rt 128
Includes: Brookline, Carlisle, Concord, Dover, Lexington, Lincoln, Natick, Needham, Newton, Sherborn, Sudbury, Waltham, Wayland, Wellesley, Weston
Launch date: January 22

Boston Metro West/I-495
Includes: Acton, Ashland, Ayer, Berlin, Bolton, Boxborough, Boylston, Chelmsford, Clinton, Dunstable, Framingham, Grafton, Groton, Harvard, Holliston, Hopedale, Hudson, Lancaster, Littleton, Marlborough, Maynard, Medway, Mendon, Milford, Northborough, Pepperell, Princeton, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Sterling, Stow, Tyngsborough, Upton, Westborough, Westford
Launch date: March 25

Boston North/I-93
Includes: Andover, Bedford, Billerica, Burlington, Chelsea, Dracut, Everett, Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynnfield, Malden, Melrose, Methuen, Middleton, North Andover, North Reading, Reading, Revere, Saugus, Stoneham, Tewksbury, Wakefield, Wilmington, Winthrop, Woburn
Launch date: March 25

Boston Metro South
Includes: Abington, Attleboro, Avon, Bellingham, Braintree, Bridgewater, Brockton, Canton, Dedham, East Bridgewater, Easton, Foxboro, Franklin, Holbrook, Mansfield, Medfield, Millis, Milton, Norfolk, North Attleboro, Norton, Norwood, Plainville, Quincy, Randolph, Rockland, Sharon, Stoughton, Walpole, West Bridgewater, Westwood, Weymouth, Whitman, Wrentham
Launch date: March 25

Boston North Shore
Includes: Amesbury, Beverly, Boxford, Danvers, Essex, Georgetown, Gloucester, Groveland, Hamilton, Ipswich, Lynn, Manchester, Marblehead, Merrimac, Nahant, Newbury, Newburyport, Peabody, Rockport, Rowley, Salem, Salisbury, Swampscott, Topsfield, Wenham, West Newbury
Launch date: April 29

Boston South Shore
Includes: Carver, Cohasset, Duxbury, Halifax, Hanover, Hanson, Hingham, Hull, Kingston, Marshfield, Norwell, Pembroke, Plymouth, Plympton, Scituate
Launch date: April 29

Cape & The Islands
Includes: Aquinnah, Barnstable, Bourne, Brewster, Chatham, Chilmark, Dennis, Eastham, Edgartown, Falmouth, Harwich, Mashpee, Nantucket, Oak Bluffs, Orleans, Provincetown, Sandwich, Tisbury, Truro, Wellfleet, West Tisbury, Yarmouth
Launch date: April 29

Many thanks and welcome to our Boston Charter Members: Tracy Campion (Metro Boston); Gail Roberts, Charles Cherney and Dorothea Feffer (Boston Metro North); Donna Scott, Deborah M. Gordon, Ann Marie Paul and Kathy Krongel (Boston Metro West / Rt 128). We’re still looking for Charter Members (early adopters and guides “on the ground”) for the Boston chapters to come.

Know any Boston top agents? Have them contact us about membership.

How well did we slice your chapter at its launch? We’d love to hear your to feedback.

The post It’s All In How You Slice It. How We Divided TAN’s New Boston Chapters. appeared first on Top Agent Network.