A Realtor Tour with Real Value

I’ve whined about the death of the Sunday open house and how I think most buyers are looking, at least initially, at homes on line. With few exceptions, we are seeing less agents through most of our broker open’s as well.

I’ve also sung praise about our participation in the Birmingham Bloomfield Realtor Network, a group of top producing agents from competing offices we meet with a few times a month. The group consists of Cindy Kahn from Hannett, Wilson & Whitehouse, Michael DeForrest, Kristi McAuliffe & Chris Pero from Max Broock, James and Kevin Cristbrook from Coldwell Banker Schweitzer, Rebecca Meisner from Weir Manuel, Frank & Julie Flynn from Hall and Hunter, and Sara Lipnitz, Renee Acho and Dmitry and me from our office, SKBK Sotheby’s International.

Since we formed last November, our focus has been on creating really wonderful Realtor tours together, in order to bring more Realtors through all of our listings. We have been very successful to that end, and our creative events like the Great Realtor Race and A Taste of Birmingham, among others, have achieved that goal with homes getting as many as 60 agents to visit.

In May we threw a new “private tour” into our group activities and did our first caravan to each other’s listings. The BBRN members loaded in to a couple of cars and we hit the road, viewing 20 lovely Oakland County homes over the course of a few hours. Our second BBRN members only caravan was last Friday, and I have to say this is turning into one of the more valuable Realtor tours we are seeing out there right now. Not only did we have a number of high achieving agents coming through our listings, but since we are all together in a group, we had the advantage of sharing really valuable feedback with each other during the tour. There was a lot of bouncing of ideas, and discussions on pricing, current competition, staging suggestions and the like. I felt like I had 10 consultants with me, adding to our sales team. My colleagues perspective was wonderful. As an added bonus, quite a few times that morning, one of us uttered to another, “I am going to show this.” Of course, the showings and the ultimate sales are what we are all working together to achieve.

This group is truly innovative. Competitors teaming up. It’s working for us, and we are excited to be part of this wonderful group.

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Written by Maureen Francis
SKBK Sotheby's International Realty, 248.430.4450
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