I guess the real estate industry has a pretty lousy reputation with most consumers according to a recent Harris Poll I discovered while reading a blog on Inman News. Of the eleven professions used in this poll we are just one up from the bottom with stockbrokers taking the bottom of the pile. Only 7% of folks actually trust us and 20% don't trust us at all. Unfortunately, we brought it on ourselves over the years. I see it happening all the time, agents who try to promote more business by doing things they really should not be doing. Like giving prospective sellers a price that's way over the local market so that seller will list with them and not the competition. That happens a lot. And unfortunately it ends up hurting the seller in the long run. Another ploy agents use to garner more business is the over-used phrase "It's really great!" in response to the question "hows the real estate market doing around here?", when they know it really isn't so great. But hey, maybe they can get this person to consider buying or selling through them if they puff things up a bit. It doesn't matter that it might not sell very soon because they've overpriced it to get the listing, it's a listing to put up on the office board. And isn't that what we agents all live for.. the almighty office listing and sales board!

The brutal competition of the industry make these things happen with many real estate agents and Realtors® who are now even more desperately trying to survive in this ever tightening economy we are currently experiencing. Consequently, buyers and sellers who have some savvy of the industry rightly don't believe a thing we say anymore. Who can blame them... we lie a lot. Okay, maybe we stretch the truth a lot sounds better. Even NAR  (National Association of Realtors®) our huge trade association which exists to promote our industry has a tendency to put out reports that are always positive to buying and selling real estate. NARs position is that it's always a great time to buy or sell real estate, when that's not always the truth of the matter. Real estate is a local industry, not a national one. What one part of the country is experiencing is not necessarily what other parts of the country are experiencing. Recently NAR has been adjusting their outlook and rightly telling consumers that real estate is local. That's a plus because it's true.

I suppose the compensation structure of real estate agents has the most to do with this propensity of agents to bend the truth in order to reel in a buyer or seller client who could produce a commission for them at closing. For the general publics knowledge, agents don't get paid a salary. Nada. Not a damned red cent until we get a client to and through the closing process where money actually transfers from a buyer to a seller. That's when we get our cut of the commission dollars paid to the broker for the sale. So, until this system is discarded or restructured, don't look for any favorable changes in the actions of most agents/Realtors®. These actions are driven by a compensation system that feeds on and promotes them and ends up giving us that low trust profile with consumers. The general public can easily see through us when we do many of the things we do and they don't like being treated like they are idiots, so we deserve their mistrust in us. Until we decide to change our methods of operations we will remain near the bottom of the pile. That's just the way I see it.

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