This is why real estate advice is broken

“It’s a great time to buy or sell!”

A long time ago I had the not-so-bright idea of a real estate brokerage that only dealt with buyers OR sellers, depending on the market we were in.

So for instance, if we were in a buyer’s market, the brokerage would only take on buyer clients and if we were in a seller’s market, the brokerage would only take on seller clients.

The idea was that INCENTIVES would be aligned from the agent’s perspective and the client’s perspective. The agent was always working in the best interests of the client because they were not giving them conflicting advice.

In a clear seller’s market, one could argue it’s disingenuous to advise someone to buy when they are rowing against the laws of supply and demand. The argument applies vice versa.

Philosophically, I am still not against this idea, but the reasons this was a not-so-bright idea are:

1. It’s impossible to always measure what market we are in
2. No realtor would want to work there because they would have to turn down a lot of business
3. It’s stupid, a brokerage tries to make money, not turn it down

Okay, so what’s the point?

If you think about it, NookLocal was born from a philosophical idea, similar to my one-market-brokerage idea. EVERYTHING we do is focused around the customer. (Yes I have seen too many Jeff Bezos interviews).

💡💡💡

The customer pays us NOTHING. We hand pick every agent we refer because THEY HAVE TO PERFORM (sorry for the caps, I’m excited). No seriously, read that again. If an agent does not perform for the client, we will never refer them again.

This accountability is the reason people love us.

The INCENTIVES are all aligned! Like my stupid brokerage!

The AGENT has to perform. The CLIENT gets an agent that has to perform.

Everyone is happy! 🙂🙂🙂

The AGENTS get more deals from us. The CLIENTS get elite customer service, accountability and personality matching.

WIN WINS ALL AROUND!

Sorry, I get way too excited about stuff like this.

I don’t like inefficient industries or bad customer service or value capture with no value add. I hate it in fact.

So this is our little tiny effort to fix something that I think is broken :)

Thanks for reading!

Please reply if this is the type of content you would like to read. Otherwise, just tell people about us. We are a startup. We are genuinely trying to build something useful in an industry a lot of people hate!

In the next newsletter…. No idea yet 🤷‍♂️

Alex Kim
CEO of NookLocal