Real Estate Agents have many advantages over other housing professionals.

When a homeowner decides to sell their house, they have three main choices. They sell the house themselves, call a professional home buyer to get an offer or they can call a real estate agent to list the house. Unless the professional home buyer IS an agent, the real estate agent will have a few weapons that put the agent as the top choice.

Agents have built in trust

Real estate investors have been around as long as people have been building structures to live and work in. Real Estate brokering did not become a business until the early 1850’s. Now, real estate agents are the most widely used source for selling and buying houses across the United States.

Although everyone knows a horror story about bad experiences with real estate agents, agents still have a level of assumed credibility. REALTORS have advertised and marketed the use of real estate agents all over the United States as the go-to people when it comes to selling a home. This continuous marketing makes it easier for an agent to be picked first, over other ways of selling a house. As long as this assumed trust is not abused, the only thing an agent has to worry about is another agent.

Marketing a house is key

As a professional home buyer, the cost of marketing a house buying business can get very expensive. A one- or two-person company can only afford a certain amount of advertising. This puts a limit on how many people a professional home buyers marketing efforts can reach. Once a home buyer gets a house, they also have to market the house for sale, whether it is as-is or rehabbed, in order to sell it.

Real Estate Agents must start their own business by assigning their license with a brokerage firm. That real estate brokerage, most times, already has a marketing budget and has probably been advertising for many years. This makes it a lot easier for an agent to get into the public eye. The brokerage advertises the company. All the agent has to do is advertise themselves.

The brokerage also has a network of other brokers and agents that can help sell a house once the house is under contract. This allows each agent to market more with less cost per person.

The network of an agent

As mentioned before, many home buying companies consist of one or two people until they manage to scale the business. There is a certain amount of networking with other house buyers, but not to the level of real estate agents.

Real estate agents don’t make as much on selling a house as a home buyer, but agents also don’t risk as much in the services they provide either. The big advantage though, is the number of homeowners they can service in the same amount of time. A good home buyer with a good system can buy and sell 2-5 houses per month, while real estate agents with a good system can list 10-15 houses per month.

A real estate agent has a network of other agents that can refer leads, bring in buyers, and even help in training. What an agent lacks in services they provide; they make up for in volume.