* From Inman News Features
The real estate industry, particularly brokers looking for new sources of revenue, dreams of the day when consumers will do one-stop shopping. In other words, home buyers and sellers will buy all of their home transaction services — loan, home inspections, title and insurance — from one single source.
A new study shows that, indeed, consumers like the concept. But for now, agents are in control, dishing out referrals to vendors based on the credibility of their relationship with the consumers. Buyers and sellers are using multiple vendors, but they are driven to those vendors by the agent as the referring source. It could be argued that the agent relationship contributes to consumer choice, which one-stop shopping does not.
Dubbed “Room For Improvement: Perspective of Real Estate Consumers and the Professionals Who Serve Them,” the study was produced by Murray & Associates.
The consumer survey was conducted by Harris Interactive, the parent company of the Harris Poll. Murray & Associates is owned by real estate guru Steve Murray who specializes in consulting and research for real estate brokerage companies.
A one-stop shop study was done by the National Association of Realtors in 1999 with similar results.
Currently, 79 percent of buyers use multiple sources when it comes to loans, inspections, title, homeowners insurance and other services, according to the survey.
Agent referrals accounted for 72 percent of the inspectors selected, 60 percent of the title policies, 47 percent of the home warranties, 66 percent of loans and 32 percent of homeowner’s insurance.
The study also found that agents are not listening to their brokers.
“It appears that that real estate agents are not recommending the services of their real estate brokerage company (if offered), because few of the services offered by the real estate agents were from the agent’s brokerage company,” read the study. “This is supported by the high percent of buyers who were unsure of whether the agent’s brokerage company offered a full range of services or not.”
More shocking for brokers is the fact that more than half of all consumers were not even aware their agent was affiliated with a broker.
The study did support the notion that consumers would consider one stop-shopping.
More than 80 percent said they would strongly or somewhat strongly consider the use of one-stop shopping if it were available.