– Homeowners wrongly perceive real estate agents’ efforts as a five-hour endeavor. The number of overhead hours agents commit to sales transactions is significantly underestimated by homeowners.
– The survey underlined that about 33% of recent homebuyers thought their real estate agents spent just five hours or less closing their transactions, which is a pitiably low number considering the actual breadth and depth of the agents’ job in the entire process.
– The report emphasizes that homeowners fail to understand the magnitude of backend work such as paperwork, showings, negotiations, and market research that a real estate agent has to undertake to ensure a smooth and successful transaction.
– A small sliver of homeowners (7%) guessed that agents dedicate upwards of 100 hours to their sales transactions, which comes closer to the actual effort that real estate professionals put into the process.
– The data reinforces the perception gap between homebuyers’ and agents’ understanding of the time and effort put into real estate transactions.
Reester & Rumble: Perception vs. Reality in Real Estate
The Unexpected Time Guesser: House Flippers
2024 Survey Unmasks the Invisible Work of Realtors
Imagine watching a solid week’s worth of your favorite TV shows in one sitting. Sounds like a dream, right? Now, imagine homeowners thinking this is the amount of time real estate agents devoted to closing their property deal (and FYI, we’re talking Game of Thrones marathon level covering eight freakin seasons-folks, not just binge-watching ‘Friends’). According to a survey conducted in 2024, a ghastly 33% of homeowners reckoned that their agent spent, hold your breath, only 5 HOURS on their entire transaction. Hell, that’s less than the length of the director’s cut version of “Titanic”!
Clearly, homeowners have as much idea about the work a real estate agent does as a dog does about the internet. And the poor agents, rather than swimming around in Scrooge McDuck-style money vaults, they are mired in a pile of paperwork, endless showings, countless negotiations, and ceaseless market research, all just to ensure the transactions go as smoothly as a Wimbledon lawn.
Then you have that rare species of homeowners, a meager 7%, who believed that agents dedicated over 100 hours (or around 12 Game of Thrones seasons). This is the closest guess to the actual scenario, but it’s still like trying to hit a dart board in the dark with a toothpick.
But why blame the homeowners? For all they know, the agents just swish their magic wands (or just casually sky-write contracts). This perception gap is more like the Grand Canyon, epic and beautifully misleading. Agents, you might want to consider putting up an LED ticker with a real-time hour count in your offices or maybe start sending out ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos of your work with holiday cards.
Original article: https://www.inman.com/2024/01/05/buyers-very-unaware-of-how-homebuying-works-wav-group/
