“All My Agent Did Was Put a Sign in the Ground and Wait for It to Sell.”

[Published July31, 2014, in the Jeffco editions of the Denver Post's YourHub section. An abbreviated version also appeared in five Jefferson County weekly newspapers.]

Regrettably, this is a common complaint — perhaps one that you yourself have made.  And if that’s all your listing agent does for you, then why should you pay him or her a big commission?

I agree completely.  I promise that you will not hear this complaint about me or any of the nine broker associates at Golden Real Estate.  Any agent who joins our company has to agree to our full service policy.  We make that easier by providing several value-added services for their listings at no cost to the agent.  (If your agent is not giving you full service, it may be because they can’t afford that value-added service.)

For example, we don’t simply require the maximum number of photographs of each agent’s listing, we have a full-time assistant trained in HDR photography who takes the photographs for them (unless they want to master that process for themselves, in which case they can use our equipment instead of having to buy it themselves).

We don’t simply require agents to create live-action narrated video tours of each listing, we shoot the video tours for them (or, again, lend them the equipment) and then post those videos on YouTube, the MLS, Trulia, Zillow and all consumer and broker websites through IDX syndication.

We cover the cost of the following services, too, and make sure agents take advantage of them:

¨ Enhancement of all listings on realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow.

¨ Free use of our moving truck and free moving boxes & materials for their clients.  (They can also offer free use of this truck to help win competitive bidding situations.)

¨ Free staging consultations by our in-house staging expert

¨ We purchase the URL’s for each listing and pay for the sign riders to promote those web addresses.

¨ To facilitate successful open houses, we provide free helium balloons and open house signs.

¨ All listings by our agents are promoted in my weekly real estate column/ad.

¨ Our high-end wooden “yard-arm” signs with solar lighting are installed free by our assistant.

Agents who tell you that such marketing is not necessary anymore are simply justifying limited service.  You can’t do too much marketing, especially when the opportunity exists to get multiple competing offers.  Consider this when choosing the listing agent for your home.