Broker/Owners

Our Collective Schizophrenic Desperation

The real estate industry is not too unlike an organization living in a state of collective schizophrenia. Figuratively speaking, we are hearing voices that are not real.

Our hallucinations are mostly self-induced; the voices we hear are actually our own mumblings and business babblings disguised as forces we do not control.

I’m now convinced the real estate industry is delusional but not in the classic clinical sense of schizophrenia. Rather, we are deluded by the notion that what we are experiencing is beyond our control.

Since we don’t have an alternative point of reference for our dilapidated and dysfunctional (not to mention unprofitable) business models, we willingly succumb to the voices that keep telling us all will be well and in time the market will return to normalcy (whatever that is).

We have come to actually believe there is a quick cure for our collective malady. We have long ago stopped taking the medications of self-reliance that can eliminate the voices and have instead turned to a political pill that only fuels the illness and delays the inevitable.

The Great Delusional Grip

Franchisors continue to pimp and prescribe increasing their delusional grip on Broker-Owners, convincing them, mistakenly, that their brands are necessary as a market value proposition and to their survival.

To control the delusions and squelch the voices we pretend our economic survival can be optimized by merely changing the colors of the pills we ingest. We hallucinate about technology solutions that magically produce profitability through Internet lead generation. The voices continue.

For a long time we have believed the pseudo voices and their message as they tell us to hold on, wait and believe that change is coming in the form of a market rebound that will resurrect the old models and their former but temporary profitability. In reality we are trading our collective ability to transform our industry for a hope in the return of things past, of things long dead and gone. Have we surrendered our business sanity to the collective stupor of a beautiful mind syndrome?

It wasn’t long ago that I also experienced the paranoia that comes from thinking others can and ought to control the business outcomes of my company and that there were forces out to get me if I didn’t comply with the verbal orders of quiet, shadowy personalities hiding under stairways and standing in dark corners, speaking to me and intimidating me as a Broker-Owner.

Dumping Market Meds into the Drinking Water

As we prepare to enter 2011, our illness is becoming more pronounced. Others see the progressive changes but we do not. We do not know whether to take the generic market meds being dispensed by the National Association of Realtors or to reject them while hoping for an alternative magic that can somehow stop the insanity.

NAR is dumping its generic market meds into the drinking water in a giant shift from its fundamental and historic premise that home ownership ought to be based upon the self-reliance of individuals to a new socialist real estate state where wealth is shifted from tax payers to fund the down payments for otherwise under-qualified first time home buyers. It’s the same old repackaged sub-prime pill I will no longer swallow.

Schizophrenia is my metaphor for disordered thinking that is not aligned with sound economic reality in the midst of a market platform that has shifted under the feet of Broker-Owners.

On one hand, we know we are living in a time of great delusion and we desperately want to stop the voices.

On the other hand, we continue to pander to the hallucinations because we want a simple solution to a complex industry illness. We know the voices are not real but we cannot quiet them. We drink the purple water and we pop the multi-colored but phony economic pills that will temporarily muffle the sounds but never permanently stop them.

We are becoming more and more desperate because we are on the edge and are finding it more and more difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. The market meds do not help because they create an additional layer of fog that further weakens our discipline and stifles our resolve to take charge of our individual and collective illness.

Stopping the Voices

There is coming a time when we will have to make a deliberate choice between believing what the voices are telling us and the reality that we are operating our industry from a position of economic dependency that will eventually render us incapable of recovery.

Like many Americans who are waiting for the government to produce solutions, many in our industry are waiting upon the bureaucratic solutions of NAR to deliver a cure that will stop the voices. We have yet to recognize that NAR is but one of the many voices that create the madness that engulfs us.

Some of us are now realizing we have fallen prey to a placebo that can never deliver true economic healing. A few of us are now realizing we have fallen prey to a placebo that can never deliver true economic healing and that in the end we must once again, deliver our own cure.

Broker/Owners

NAR’s Tail Wagging the Dog National Control Model

On Tuesday, December 02, 2009, Inman News carried a new piece by Matt Carter, entitled “NAR Backing Realcomp Appeal.” REALonomics believes the article is another demonstration of NAR’s attempt as the tail of the industry, to wag us, the dog. Here is our response to NAR’s reported actions.

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Here we go again!

NAR should be seen here in its true light, a purveyor of control, monopolization and the promotion of the punishment of creative models that do not meet the local real estate dominance model put in force and sustained by its vast network of local Associations.

Although we are not supporters of discount brokerage as a viable business model, we feel the need to speak out on this issue and the freedom of Broker-Owners to create business models without the fear of retaliation and punishment by NAR and local Associations.

We are forced to ask the question, “Is anyone paying attention to how our dues, financial assets and human capital are being used by NAR?” Furthermore, are we paying attention to how NAR and local Associations are dealing with Broker-Owners who are not lining up in lock-step with centralized policy?

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Broker/Owners

Owners on the Edge of a Razor

Syndicated from e-Partner

Owners are engaged in the delicate balancing act; walking on the razor’s edge, barefoot.

Slicing into Profit

The razor upon which owners must balance themselves is now slicing so deeply into revenues that profitability is now proving more and more illusive. Today’s Broker/Owners are confronted with an economy that is not rebounding fast enough to enable them to survive.

e-Partner has long held that Broker/Owners are the financial backbone of the real estate industry and that their survival should be one of the top priorities of our industry through 2010.

Our Bleeding Feet

The razor’s edge takes no prisoners and yields no concessions to owners who are struggling to meet their ever increasing general operating expenses. Trapped by the same economic factors faced by other businesses, owners are looking for ways to decrease fixed and personally guaranteed obligations.

e-Partner talks to owners from every brand and those who are independent and the story is generally the same. There are simply too few closing and too much bricks-and-mortar operating expenses. “There is just not enough transaction commission to meet the monthly demands we have,” one broker/owner told us.

Mandatory Agility

Agility, created and sustained, is the first of the Ten Commandments of the New Real Estate Economy.

Although we are not quick on our feet, the razor’s edge is sensitizing us to perils of standing still for too long in one place. Our bloated organization body weight presses down on the sharp stainless steel edge and this slices away large chunks of capital required to sustain retail models.

New principle: the razor’s edge is now an owner’s continuing reality and he/she/all of us will learn to walk on this edge nimbly and quickly or, we will be cut to pieces.
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