Well-trained agents perform well to market adversity
Category Blog
Good real estate agents are like professional tennis players. They need constant coaching and training in order to maintain, and preferably exceed, top performance. Properly trained, well equipped, and solidly supported agents in South Africa have always performed well irrespective of prevailing market conditions. It will be no different in the current economic circumstances.
I can remember colleagues complaining about the market environment towards the end of the pre-democracy era. At the time, ‘necklacing’ was the hallmark of social unrest, and interest rates were at 26 per cent! Current market sentiment is clearly nowhere near as bad. This is in spite of the political, social and economic turbulence and uncertainty the country has faced so far in 2017 – not least as a result of the downgrades of our economy by two global rating agencies.
By the time democracy dawned in 1994, I had left my beloved teaching profession and was enjoying dominance as an estate agent in the higher end suburbs of Johannesburg.
Applying market fundamentals
That was achieved by simply applying marketing fundamentals that later became the key elements of an estate agent training programme I subsequently developed. At its core was a module on how best to close the gap between the aspirations of both buyer and seller in order to achieve a best-price result – notwithstanding the marketing environment. Attended by thousands of countrywide agents over the past 33 years, those weekly training sessions remain in place today as the key element of best-practice home selling at Ennik Estates.
There is no question that agents who cut corners and take short cuts will find the going tough as the current adverse market conditions become even more challenging. The roughly 50 000 (out of a total of 80 000) agents who left the real estate sector within a year after the global financial crisis unfolded early in 2008 bears testimony to that.
Business as usual
Given that the current economic challenges are still manageable relative to the historical scenario, the scene now seems set for the market to begin its recovery. It will therefore be business as usual for the well-trained, top-drawer agents who will inevitably remain in the market no matter what.
They will start selling four to five homes a month on the back of their sheer professionalism and skill in marketing in adverse political and economic conditions. Conversely, mediocre agents will face falling off the bus. Buyers, meanwhile, are clearly being presented with an increasingly wider choice of homes in what is now the most undervalued residential property market we have seen in the past two decades.
Author: Ronald Ennik
