What is a mobile agency? With the Internet making marketing properties so much cheaper than traditional newspaper marketing – agencies are finding news ways to reach out to vendors. One of the emerging trends is that of a mobile agency.
Here is how it works. An agency sets up one main office (glitz and glamour) and then has a team of sales people across a wide area. These mobile agents are pretty much always on the road, meeting potential vendors in their own homes, showing open homes, signing contracts at homes – in fact just about the only time they are in the office is when they are filing documents. With wireless Internet access also becoming more widespread in major capitals – email and messaging is available almost anywhere.
Why is this a problem?
With just about every major portal charging by the office, it is seen by some as being unfair. Why should one agency pay for 5 offices, when other agencies only need pay for one office?
An agency with more than one office has the advantage of their location in certain areas, but the overheads are massive compared to the mobile type offices.
These complaints are reasonable and be sure that major real estate portals are looking at ways to combat this. One such way is to charge agents not by office but by stock. My thinking is that this will be introduced within the next 12 months.
Here is how it will work.
To obtain a license from a real estate portal you will be granted up to 100 listings per license. You can add more listings, however after 100 it will be a price per listing, that is unless you may want a 150 license, 200 license and so on.
Major portals could be in for a windfall with this, because for many agents pricing will remain the same (well the same as in 8% rises each and every year) , however mobile type agencies will have to pay for larger licenses to accommodate their stock.
One lure to move to this could be for a portal like realestate.com.au to finally allow residential agents to list commercial properties as well as residential – as long as it is no more than one hundred listings. This current set up does not work for residential agents with a splattering of commercial listings – to be honest this is a little ridiculous.
You can be sure when the portals do this they will make sure it brings in more revenue – however I can see the merit in the move!
1 Comment
Dominic S
See – when you think about it, you can almost write something that matters to our industry. My agency always has less than 100 listigns and if it were cheaper – then we would definately sign onto it. Many agents are doing this now and whilst it does not effect me because I only have one office, I can see why some of the big boys are getting annoyed because they can do it cheaper – and make more money!