Agents Decoded: Stop giving showing feedback
This outdated "professional courtesy," once expected of buyer agents, has passed its expiration date — especially as liability risks have increased.
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The direction of your business depends on decisions you make every day. Agents Decoded can help you by presenting the perspectives of seasoned pros who have been there, made mistakes, and found success.
A few decades ago — when real estate was still a low-tech industry and buyer agency was not yet the norm — seller clients had no way to assess how their listing was being received by the buying public outside of showings.
It was natural, and indeed assumed, that showing agents report their buyer's feedback to the listing agent, who shared it with their sellers.
A persistent expectation
Even after buyer agency became the primary form of representation, feedback was still expected as a professional courtesy. It was programmed into automated showing platforms, and procuring it comprised a considerable amount of a listing agent's workload. It was baked into the culture of cooperation to such a degree that many listing agents and sellers considered it unprofessional for a buyer agent to decline to give feedback.
I viewed it as a nuisance. I disliked debating with listing agents who attempted to overcome my client's objections with misplaced rebuttals. I also felt like it was a waste of time to tell a homeowner what they should already know. There is old panelling. The driveway is a black diamond ski slope in the winter. The highway behind the yard is not white noise, it's an interstate. The basement has the aroma of a sad cat.
Times — and obligations to the client — have changed
There is an obvious reason why offering feedback is not only ill advised, but potentially a liability landmine: confidentiality. It simply makes no sense for a buyer agent to divulge their client's thoughts to a listing agent. The potential for compromising their bargaining position is high, and in the current era of buyer agency, consumers rightly expect the same advocacy that sellers have always enjoyed.
These confidentiality concerns are not new, but since the Sitzer/Burnett settlement and the subsequent practice changes, it has become increasingly important for buyer agents to demonstrate their value.
Confidentiality ranks highly in that promise of advocacy. For buyers, the mere optic of their agent collaborating with the listing agent can be off-putting, upsetting, or worse.
Moreover, the practice itself is antiquated when sellers have so many other ways to gauge their listing's performance. Online analytics now give listing brokers incredible metrics and insights that are more scientific and actionable than an intermediary offering a subjective opinion on price and condition. A few examples:
RealScout has a "test the market" tool that triangulates the property characteristics with price and registered users' saved search preferences. I can literally slide the potential asking price up and down and see, in real time, how buyer interest rises and falls with user data.
Savvy brokerages can gain impressive insights through analytics and heat maps. I can see what web pages are getting the most traffic, what regions the searching public is originating from, and the tools to adjust the focus and direction of my marketing. I couldn't do that with newspaper ads in the 90s.
Social media campaigns are using AI algorithms to learn which web and app users to target, and social ad campaigns show ad impressions, click-throughs, and the responses from interested consumers. This gives rich intelligence into the performance of the listing and whether or not price, imaging, or marketing remarks should be adjusted.
With all this digital magic, why are agents still chasing feedback?
Simply put, it's an old habit that has no upside except for the sensibilities of old timers who are still blurring the lines between representation and cooperation. The appearance of agency conspiracy aside, modern tools allow us to do better for sellers, and the ease of using them is surprising.
Forward-thinking brokers and agents have a straightforward choice: Continue to engage in a pre-buyer agency era practice that potentially breaks their duty of confidentiality, or use science.
One is an awkward and conspiratorial-looking risk, the other is a data-driven, empirical practice that positions the agent as more skilled and professional.
One is anecdotal and subjective, the other is evidence-based and factual.
One is a powder keg of potential liability, the other is value-enhancing and upleveling.
The industry can no longer afford to continue legacy practices that aren't aligned with new expectations from the public we serve. Instead, association and brokerage leaders should do all they can to teach agents to embrace more meaningful and informative KPIs. That would be a big step in elevating our stature and demonstrating our value to a sometimes skeptical public.
It's time to do away with analog feedback and embrace the digital.
J. Philip Faranda is a manager and associate broker at Howard Hanna | Rand Realty serving Westchester and Putnam Counties, just north of New York City. He was previously a broker-owner at J. Philip Real Estate, the top independent brokerage in the two counties by transaction sides, which he founded in 2005. He also writes a real estate blog which has been cited by major media outlets. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.
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