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Show Transcription:

Note: This is an automated transcription. Please forgive the robots as they tend to make some (a lot of) mistakes...

Speaker 1: (00:02)
It's time for the savvy real tour podcast. I'm Walter Storholt alongside Angie Cole, the owner and broker in charge of ACole Realty serving you throughout the triangle, teaching you about the ins and outs when it comes to buying or selling a home. You can find the team online by going to eight Cole realty.com that's a C O L E realty.com or by calling (919) 578-3128 that's (919) 578-3128 and now it's time for one of the top realtors in the triangle, Angie Cole and the savvy realtor podcast. Angie, unfortunately, you know, let me say this first, there are a lot of amazing real estate agents out there. Absolutely. But like any industry, there are some bad apples and then sometimes it's not necessarily a bad Apple, but maybe a an agent that you went counter might not be telling you the full truth. Maybe it's a half-truth or a little white lie and maybe it's okay to do those things sometimes, maybe not.

Speaker 1: (01:01)
And I'm, we're going to talk about a couple of those examples over the next couple of minutes. And I'm curious what kinds of lies do you see most often happen or that you hear about and why these are so detrimental to the process and how you try to guard against these things as not only an agent yourself, but a leader of other agents in your company and helping them, you know, do things the right way in this industry. So I would break it down in a couple of different ways. And this isn't meant to be super heavy, tough conversation, lies, lies, lies. Sometimes they're there more of those tricks in the real estate world that we have to be guarding against. And one interesting one I think is the years of experience element. You know, inexperienced agents will try to cover up their lack of real estate experience by talking about, I don't know, other things like, Oh, well I've lived in the area for X amount of years and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: (01:49)
You know, it's funny to me, I, um, I almost laugh at the opposite where it's, Oh, I've been practicing for 30 years and so they clearly are no, no at all. But then you go and look at their numbers and they sell one home a year. Um, so I actually run into more of a years of experience of agents that have been in the business for a very, very, very long time and are not up to date with technology. Yes. I'm not up to date with, you know, the newest and greatest, you know, technology, you know, they, they like to throw out and it always seems to be the, they're just the disgruntled ones. They like to argue and fight with you. It's not a positive experience. Not that all agents that have been as business long time are like that, but there are some and then they'll throw out to you, well I been doing, you know, Missy, I've been doing this for this many years and it's like, that's great, but you're not really actively practicing, you know, so they try to, yeah. Uber compensate and you know, try to prove their point by throwing out how many years of experience they have. So, um,

Speaker 1: (02:53)
so whether it's a lot of years of experience or not that many, you're more interested in the numbers

Speaker 2: (02:57)
that I am I, and that's something I think a client should be interested in too. You know. Can you tell me how active you are on the market? How many buyers or sellers have you helped in the last year? You know, you want to make sure that you're choosing an agent who is up to date, who's current, who understands the market. You know, in its current state, you know, having an agent to help you that has only, you know, helps, you know, one or two clients a year. They're more than likely, probably not as savvy. Probably can't negotiate the best deal for you, get you the best, you know, best value. Um, so yes to me is not so much about yours, but it's more about like experience, you know, hands on actual experience, know there are a lot of amazing agents in our market that heavily busy been in business for one to two years and who are just killing it and doing an amazing job for their clients. So yes, I would not focus on so much the years in the business, but ask them about their current business. How many clients are they currently helping?

Speaker 1: (03:54)
I love it when I come up with content, I'm like, Oh yeah, she'll be able to tee off on this. And then you take it in a completely other direction and I know it's fantastic. I think it's, I think it's great. I love it that you're able to think outside the box and just you have a different perspective on things. So I think that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, focus on those numbers and not so much on whether somebody has been in the business two years or 20 look at the numbers and let that speak for itself. So that goes with a lot of industries too. That's something to keep in mind. Not that to say that there isn't benefit to having experienced, don't take us, get us out of it. Right.

Speaker 2: (04:24)
Years of experience. It does go a long way, you know, because you just become more seasoned per se, but that does not necessarily mean that you are the best agent out there and you're able to advise the clients the best way because not only do you need the years of experience, you also actually need, you know, to be actively in production too.

Speaker 1: (04:44)
That's a great point. All right, so that's the years of experience half-truth or bending of the truth. That happens from time to time. But Andrew has a little bit different perspective on that, which is cool. Uh, what about specialties? You know, sometimes an agent will claim to be a specialist in a particular area or a neighborhood, but they might've just sold like one home there, but now they're a specialist in that neighborhood or something like that. Is that a real thing? You see that in the real estate world?

Speaker 2: (05:06)
I do. I do. Um, you know, I see it in the sense of specialties as far as, Oh, this is my area, this is my neighborhood. I know the ins and outs, dah, dah, dah. That's great. You understand the neighborhood. But you know, how about your marketing? How about your reach? If you're listing a home, for example, in that neighborhood, what are you doing outside of that neighborhood to drive people in? You know, so it's great again to understand the market, the neighborhood. But you know, when you're selling a home, you really need to have the best marketing efforts to drive people to that area. So really be in the know it all for the neighborhood doesn't help you to sell a home any quicker. Also, you mentioned specialties. Um, I just start thinking about, you know, all of the different, like acronyms, like the ABR, like duh, like there's, there's all these different designations we have, um, that we could take a class for and get these designations.

Speaker 2: (06:00)
And I feel like that was something, and sorry if real city does hear this and they don't like me anymore, but I kind of feel like that was something of the past, you know, the agent with the most designations, you know, after their name, kind of like, you know, a doctor, you, you put, you know, your, your designation after your name. I mean, that's a big deal because you went through a lot of schooling to get that. But as a real estate professional, you know, we take a two hour long course and now we can add this designation. And I don't really think that that's a big deal. Um, you know, once again, it's, you know, you could take all the classes in the world, but until you're hands on and you're actually in production, you're helping people with buying and selling a home. That's when you get the experience, right?

Speaker 1: (06:40)
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. Um, the, the amount of schooling you go to certainly has a big impact on how good of a doctor you're probably going to be because there is so much that you can learn from the books. But in real estate you've got to learn so much on the fly and just through that experience that we were talking about a little bit earlier and just getting your hands, you know, your hands dirty and getting in there and figuring things out as you go. And, uh, as you, you learn on the job in a lot of ways it seems like, so the designations aren't as important.

Speaker 2: (07:08)
Right. And that's the big difference. I mean, as a doctor you have your clinicals, you know, you have, you have your actual hands on. I mean, you're doing the actual, you know, business, you know, after you're done with ed textbooks, right? Real estate, we go to real estate school and then what w we're not, we're not helping clients. We're not, you know, shadowing someone or learning how to actually serve as clients. I mean, honestly, we take our real estate and, and I feel like I'm talking bad about the real estate world right now, but we go to school to get, you know, our, our pre-licensing courses completed to get our real estate license. And you leave that class, you have no idea even how to write an offer, but it's the, it's the honest truth. So you need the training and you need the hands on after that in order to be, you know, an expert in the field.

Speaker 1: (07:52)
Yeah. And I think of, uh, my wife, you know, just became a nurse practitioner here in the area and, uh, very exciting for her. And it was so funny when she, you know, finished the masters and you know, got this job. It's just so funny cause they're like, yeah, it's going to take you a year to get up to speed on everything. So like here you, you've gotten this advanced degree, you know, you feel like you're on top of the world and they're still like, yeah, but there's still a lot that you gotta learn so it's going to take that full year, you know, which is too funny. All right, so that's specialties. Interesting conversation there for sure. All right, here's one, Angie, that I hear in marketing a lot and I've never heard you say this, so I'm curious to hear your kind of opinion on this.

Speaker 1: (08:30)
Maybe you haven't, I just, it's not ringing a bell, but I don't think you've said this, this sort of idea that there's a pool of buyers, this special pool of buyers that an agent has access to. I've heard it in marketing before where they say, you know what, we've got a great pool of buyers who are always ready to buy. They're lined up and ready to buy your home and we're going to market it specifically to those folks and that's going to give you an advantage. Is that just a marketing ploy to get like sellers excited? Yes. Okay.

Speaker 2: (08:56)
That, unfortunately is probably not being completely honest with you. Um, it's funny, I hear that same kind of script when some agents are calling on what's called expired listings and they'll say, Oh, we have buyers that you know, want your home. And it's like, well, if you had buyers that wanted their home, why didn't they make an offer when it was active and on the market just two days ago? Right. Um, so, you know, be careful of listening to the, we have a pool of buyers, um, because typically that's not the honest truth. And you know, if you look at numbers and research for the whole entire triangle, I mean probably every area, the percentage of inhouse transactions is actually fairly minimal, you know, um, if I did the numbers, you know, probably I would say maybe five to 8% of our total sales is in house.

Speaker 2: (09:49)
Meaning where we do designate a dual agency where one person represents the seller and another person in our firm represents the buyer. But beyond that, most of the time the buyer is coming from an outside firm, okay. For our listings or vice versa. You know, our buyers that we have within our firm or going to outside listings. So you know, whenever a potential listing agent tells you that they have a pool of buyers that are just, you know, ready to bang down the door to come buy your home, I would be a little bit weary of that.

Speaker 1: (10:20)
Yeah, I thought that was something to file under there too. Good to be true or it sounds like it is and it probably is kind of thing. So that's when I throw in that category for sure. All right. Last but not least, um, this is a little bit different angle here. It's not a marketing ploy necessarily. This is more than the negotiation process and the multiple offer conversation. And this seems to me Angie, a little bit more like agent on agent crime that could take place. But uh, but the clients obviously are still the victims here of that battle and of that war. So there's really no way to truly know, right? If there are actual multiple offers coming in on a home. So if you and a buyer are looking at a home and then the seller comes back to you and says, Hey, we've got multiple offers, and they try to create that bidding war, technically you have no way of knowing if that's true, right. You have to kind of take the agent at their word.

Speaker 2: (11:07)
Right, right. And I mean that's more of an ethical issue and concern. Should an agent tell you they have multiple offers and they're not being honest with you. So, um, there is no way of us in our market to know that. Um, I've heard in other States if they tell you there's multiple offers, they are required to show you the offer, which I actually thought was kind of pretty cool. Like, you know, I'm assuming they probably marked through, you know, the important information, you know, as far as like pricing, dates, all that good stuff. But, um, they are required to show a copy of the other offer. So, I mean, talk about holding someone to be an honest and truthful, right? Yeah. But you know, I, our team, we would absolutely never, ever, ever be dishonest and state that, you know, we have multiple offers on a home unless we did.

Speaker 2: (11:53)
And also an acceptable trick like, Hey, it's just part of the game. Super on ethical. Yeah. That, I mean that's a lie. That's unethical also in order to even disclose that there's more than one offer, there's another offer on the table. We have to get our sellers permission as well. Um, you know, we cannot, as agents, we can not negotiate back and forth or share any information about the home as far as, yeah, just negotiations go without getting the permission from our client, from our seller. So yeah, if someone's using that multiple offers tactic to try to drive pricing or get more offers, then that is completely unethical and should not be, you know, not been done.

Speaker 1: (12:34)
That makes me feel a lot better though. Cause I thought that that could be certainly an area that would be, you know,

Speaker 2: (12:39)
open to that, that kind of conversation. Like as far as like kind of, yeah. Yeah. Uh, no, I mean it's, it's definitely unethical. And, I mean, I can't say it's not done, but it should not be, it's not a, it's not a wink, wink, well-known thing through the real estate world that a lot of people are out there doing that. So that makes it feel a little bit better. Yeah. I know from when we sold our honest people out there,

Speaker 1: (13:02)
sold our home with you guys, we had got into a multiple offer situation, which was great. And um, you know, I can speak from experience that it was just, you know, it wasn't made up. It was, it was the real deal. So yeah, it's good to know that that is probably on the majority, the experience of a lot of people, so that's good. Yeah. Very good to know that actually assuages some fears there, so that's cool. Well, there you have it, some real estate lies and half truths. Any others you would want to throw out there, Angie, that, that come to your mind or something that you see a lot that gets under your skin or you kind of want to want to vent about a little bit? It's okay if not, you did a great job with those.

Speaker 2: (13:35)
I know. I feel like as soon as we stopped this conversation I was like, Oh, I got one. Um, yeah. I can't think of anything just off the top of my head. I think those are some great points that you brought to light in a good thing. You don't have 18 other yeah, right, right. Yeah, no, I know. I think, I think he did an amazing job. So there we go. You hit on some of the major ones.

Speaker 1: (13:56)
Yeah, those and they're interesting to talk about, that's for sure. So years of experience, specialties, that magical pool of buyers sitting out there and uh, then pleasantly ending with multiple offers, actually probably mostly legit whenever you see that and frowned upon to use that as a gimmick. So that is all good to know. If you've got any questions for Angie, want to talk about buying or selling your next home? You can reach out to one of the best real estate teams here in the area by calling nine one nine five, three eight 64 77. That's (919) 538-6477. Angie has so many years of experience. She has so many specialties throughout the area. That pool of buyers just sitting, waiting to come in and buy your home. I'm just kidding. I'm going through the list that we just totally abused here on the show. Just joking now, if you want solid, straightforward advice and guidance when it comes to buying or selling your next home, reach out to Angie and her team again.

Speaker 1: (14:51)
Call or text (919) 538-6477 that's (919) 538-6477 and always [email protected] that's a C O L E realty.com you've been listening to the savvy real tour podcast. I'm Walter restore Holt alongside Angie Cole. She's the owner and broker in charge of Aiko Realty here in the triangle, and if you have questions for Angie, we invite you to go online to H Cole realty.com listen to past podcast episodes on the website. Read the blog and all the great information, including the option to find a home right there on the website. That's a Cole realty.com and you can also call Angie with your questions. (919) 578-3128

Speaker 2: (15:45)
did you know that Angie Cole also has a radio show? Tune into the savvy realtor Saturdays at noon on one Oh 6.1 FMW TKK.