Neil Jenman has been fairly vocal about his opposition to Auctions claiming that they only get lower prices for sellers.  In fact he lists 9 reasons why they get lower prices.  Jenman has claimed that he will and has bought at Auctions but he has never sold by Auction

Well it was with some shock that opening up Saturday’s edition of the Gold Coast Bulletin and I found Fox’s Real Estate, a fully fledged Jenman Approved agency  advertising 10 Clinton Street, Labrador as an auction for sale.

It all seems pretty hypocritical to me but is that really surprising?

Unfortunately this raises a few unanswered questions.

So is Jenman now Auction friendly? Are we about to see Jenman join the ranks of the Auction brigade?

Should the owner of this property be concerned that the agent selling their home actually believes that they will get less during this method?

Does anybody know any other Jenman Approved agencies conducting Auctions?

Will Today Tonight run a story on this change of heart ?

******************* UPDATE   13th of November *********************

The auction is tomorrow at 1pm and because of Jenman’s hypocritical stand it has generated lots of interest in the real estate industry including the media.

More and more questions are being asked about this auction:-

1. Which auctioneer is going to become the first Jenman approved auctioneer?
2. What is the banks response to Jenman’s comment that “Anyone who knows anything about real estate knows that banks and mortgagees often don’t care about the price – they just want it sold and out of the way.”
3. As a self described Consumer Advocate will Jenman pay the shortfall out of his own pocket to the consumer in this story who  is going to be held responsible for the shortfall between his mortgage and the sales price because Jenman and the agent has openly admitted that the auction cannot get the highest possible price?
4. Will the bank concerned confirm or deny that they “insisted” on a Jenman agent auctioning the property like Neil Jenman states.  What is the TRUTH Mr Jenman?
5. When will the other Jenman agents start handling auctions?

Kevin Turner from RE Uncut has been conducting a range of interviews on the subject covering the story. I believe that neither Jenman, the salesperson or the principal are answering Kevin’s request for interview at the moment but quite a few people involved are. If anybody has Neil’s personal contact details and would like to share them it would be appreciated.

I think it’s incredible when a media whore gets shy when the subject turns back to himself in anything but a positive light. Maybe the cameras and a journalist will be chasing him down the road getting into his car zooming off.  With  his own personal experience  he is probably worried that his comments might be heavily edited and taken out of context and sensationalized like his  targets often claim.

Kevin will be running the story at  www.reuncut.com next Thursday and Friday and we will update the blog with the auction result over the weekend.

**************UPDATE*************

Unfortunately I did not return from Brisbane in time to make the Auction on the day but someone who was there has advised that they had 3 or 4 bidders with bidding starting at $300,000. The property was announced on the market at $550,000 and eventually sold at $600,000. I have not had a chance to double check the figures but this must give the Jenman group a 100% closure rate on their Auctions.

The site owners are also conducting an adwords campaign to spread the word against Mr Jenman.
It is a collection of articles from numerous sources about Jenman and includes the parodies of the Jenman slogan “Promoting Himself in Real Estate” and one of Jenman’s pet quotes….. “Stay Safe – Don’t Sign Anything from a Jenman Agent”.

Even if you dont learn anything, you should at least get a laugh.

The website which rose to attention recently www.refrealestate.com.au claims they have a “patent pending” on the web based referral system but Jenman and some associates have been running www.realestatemonitors.com.au since early 2006. The only difference is refrealestate entices sellers to use their system by giving them some of the money back something I can’t see Jenman ever doing. The Jenman associated site tries to get a referral when a seller does not have a Jenman approved office in their area.

Has anybody ever received a referral request by www.realestatemonitors.com.au?

For a system that basically told us it was bad for vendors to advertise in newspapers and online and that the only ones to benefit were agencies themselves, it seems many have now distanced themselves from this mantra.

Most have now embraced the Internet and newspapers again and recently I saw one advertising listings in a newspaper guide. Now like the Old testament, we are not supposed to have taken all that was written literally, still the core beliefs are the same.

So why did it fail? Well for one he introduced the system where even blind freddy could sell properties and so potential buyers were cueing around the corner to get their hands on a anything that hit the market and agents were begging for listings.

As soon as the market cooled and turned to a buyers market, the vendors also left these agencies in droves. Where most city offices have 30+ listings, I researched 5 firms and found a total of 50 listings for sale between them, hardly a way to run a successful real estate company.

So now the majority are back marketing listings…….a good thing too I say!

So can anyone tell me what has happened to the ‘Whispering sledgehammer’? Or some other reasons why it failed?
PS: I just made that up!

Put simply, when you need to reach out to buyers, you need to advertise.

Neil Jenman has made his mark and has been popular amongst media outlets as an alternative view. His views reach into the minds of many people who have been left disenchanted with the practices of the few.

Neil Jenman will not be affected, his star has risen and will more than likely stay that way. Every industry needs a Jenman (or has one).

My problem is the agencies across Australia that have marketed his system. Neil Jenman has penned forewords for books advocating vendors selling themselves and bypass agents altogether. This would not be popular amongst his members and is more self serving than anything else.

He can almost always be seen sprouting popular beliefs and will more than likely derive much of his income from these stances from speaking engagements in the future.

I will say this, he does bring an argument that some will say is fresh and needed in the industry, however I beleive it is more self serving than anything else.

The fact remains that just about anything you need to sell in any economy and across any industry – needs to be marketed effectively.

Without marketing, Nike, Coca Cola, Virgin, IBM and just about any other brand would hardly ever have been heard of.

So today I track around 100 Jenman agents and I have noticed one thing, many of them are now advertising listings on their websites. Some openly and some you need to register your contact details.(yeah that will work!)

The idea that the more you advertise the more you drive down the property just does not add up in my figures.

Looking over recent Auction/Sales results and looking into what the seller was asking for and what they are getting are almost within the 2% range.

My company would have no success and nor my agents without clever marketing.

So I think we will see a large shift over the coming months/years to see more Jenman agents or the Jenman system refined to change with the economic climate.

However, one thing is missing, it is nearly impossible to find an agent and as he thinks that advertising a property reduces the price you can achieve for the vendor property – well, you guessed it their is not a property listing in sight.

As a quick note, the Jenman site is a perfect example of bad design. People do not read websites, they scan from left to right for the information they are looking for. This site is just full of warning signs, pages and pages of text and ramblings. This weakens any point he is trying to make.

Back to the article

The Real Estate Boom
The real estate boom was the perfect time for Jenman to hit the world, with so many buyers and so few listings, pretty much any property in any area was going to fetch a pretty good price, with or without advertising. This was Neil Jenman’s time and he pounced.

Now there are hundreds of agents across Australia calling his tune. It will be very hard for any of these professionals to ever go back to the traditional way of selling properties because, this would be going against the ethics that they continually preach today.

However Neil Jenman will always be in demand as the renegade. I think in the future he will probably advocate people selling homes themselves, it is the only direction he has not taken yet and it will further boost his profile. (to the detriment of his “Approved Agents”).

Cooling Market
Times will only get tougher for Jenman Agents as the market cools further because the very principal of selling a property when there is a lack of genuine buyers is to reach the potential buyers through target marketing.

Ethics
Now I do not want to question what Neil stands for, because it is quite clear and he certainly has some points, but most of his claims are not against Real Estate Agencies but are against some of the people working for these agencies.

All industry sectors have less than satisfactory people working in them. Sales industries whether it is houses, cars, mobile phones, or steak knives attract more than their fair share of rogues and real estate is no different.

One of the points Jenman actually makes a contradicts one of his code of ethics and that is – that advertising your property lets potential buyers know how long it has been on the market and therefore, the longer it is on the market the more this puts the buyer in control.

Am I then to believe that if a property has not sold through a Jenman agent for a period of time that they tell a potential buyer that it has just been placed on the market? Or do they ethically disclose that “to be honest with you sir/madam this property has been on the market for 6 months now”. The only way around this is to actually hide the truth. Not very ethical!

Truth is there can be any number of factors in relation to a property not selling, too high a price is one, it might also be a unique property that may only attract a certain buyer, another conclusion may be that there are not alot of buyers at the time it has been offered.

Advertising helps sell anything.
Think about this. Put your VCR up for sale at a reasonable price, place it on your coffee table and wait for someone to call you. What no one called? Amazing!

At the same time put an ad in the local newspaper for your VCR that reads “VCR For Sale, Good Condition, NTSC/Pal playback, Long Play/Short Play $150.00 ONO.”

I think you have more chance of selling it in the newspaper, than you do of the VCR turning into a DVD player with an 80 GIG Hard drive.

You will get phone calls and the market and skill of the negotiator will determine the price. Most people want to bargain a price, so it takes a certain skill and confidence to keep the price at the requested level. This is why it will always be difficult for people to sell homes themselves, although there will always be a market for this.

Jenman would like you to think that they have hundreds of buyers on their books waiting to purchase and by listing with them, you will tap into their vast resources of eager buyers – a claim any agent can and does make.

The truth is the more people that know about the product or service you are selling, the more likely you are to find a buyer. If your advertising targets a certain audience (Real Estate Portals, Property Guides) then advertising that product or service to that market even further enhances the opportunities.

Every major company, whether it be Microsoft, Virgin Blue or Telstra, only sells such large volumes of their respective products or services by marketing and spreading that marketing to as many potential customers as possible. This fact not even Mr Jenman can deny and his claims that advertising lowers the price is grabbing at straws and makes all of his other arguments look weak