Conference: Real Estate agent skills
Description
During the last decade, Malta had witnessed a rapid increase in the number of real estate agents, whose role is to act as intermediaries in the process of negotiating and arranging transactions involving the acquiring or disposing or leasing of land. In July 2020, the profession became a regulated one under Maltese law for those agents that mediate in more than 2 transactions per year. From the point of view of buyers, they will feel safer in one of the bigger, if not the biggest, investments of their lives. From the point of view of real estate agents, it generates a series of challenges and opportunities which the most forward-looking agents would not dare let sail past.
Real estate agents are, essentially, middlemen. As such, they have to be strong negotiators. They must ask the right questions and iron out the discrepancies between parties. Their job is heavily reliant on a good reputation, which is, more often than not, tarnished by a few bad representatives of the trade. Those affected by their malpractice go on to cast the whole profession in an unfavourable light. As such, only those agents that choose honesty, truthfulness, and integrity as their creed are able to gain and retain their reputation in the eyes of their customers.
Like many other spheres of activity, the sector is mired in hurdles. Most agents do not have a fixed salary and, contrary to popular belief, only close a handful of deals every year. As such, it is of vital importance for them to build a loyal customer base. This requires a good deal of skill, patience, time, and energy. In fact, time management is one of the most pressing issues that agents have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Among other tasks, they have to source properties, clients, arrange photo shoots, coordinate appointments, organise advertising campaigns through many mediums, platforms, and formats.
Speaker
Jeff Buttigieg – Chief Executive Officer at REMAX Malta.
Conference Insights
Since January 1st, 2022, real estate agents operating in Malta must be licensed. The CEO of RE/MAX Malta, Jeff Buttigieg, reviewed how this has impacted standards of professionalism in the sector, adding the insights he has extracted from self-conducted market research.
Buttigieg’s conference at MARE Summit served as a mirror held in front of the sector, and aimed to convince other agencies to strive towards a high-quality customer experience.
The recently introduced licensing framework, although not rushed, did not take into account the insights of the most knowledgeable in the industry.
As a result, the license is limited to technical considerations, such as knowing key legislation regarding the Planning Authority, and to the role of notaries. The enforcement leaves much to be desired, although there have been some fines to agents who have not completed the necessary course.
Standards in regard to quality of service are lacking. Some agencies, particularly small ones, do not have an onboarding or training process for their agents. Others tend to erroneously think that NLP training or similar selling techniques can substitute real-estate specific training. This results in bad practices which, in turn, gives the profession a bad reputation.
Buttigieg mentioned an oft-repeated lament that was independently echoed by many other speakers of the summit. Namely, the difficulty of getting a hold of statistics in Malta, either from the National Statistics Office or other governing bodies.
In an effort to understand the status of the market, RE/MAX commissioned a mystery shopper exercise, in which 200 agents acted as customers who knew exactly what they wanted.
The results revealed inadequacies in many fronts, such as lack of follow up on non-answered calls, a staggering rate of agents who did not hand out business cards, a general inability to qualify customers, or insufficient time to build rapport with clients.
This pervasive absence of good service gives a good reason as to why a large number of property owners prefer to sell directly to buyers. Buttigieg compels all agencies attending the event to think about how much revenue could be increased if standards of good practice were enacted.
To tackle all of these challenges, Jeff Buttigieg proposed the following measures:
- The creation of minimum standards for customer service.
- A vision of where the industry wants to be in 5/10 years.
- Educating the public on the role of real estate agents.
- The need to invest in research, monitoring, and enforcing existing standards.
Updates and further information about the summit’s developments can be followed on the official blog and on its social media channels.