You may be looking for an agent to help you with your quest to find a home or investment. You may wish you had one to help with the sale of your property or merely to answer some questions about the market in general. You may pick an agent from your town or neighborhood, be it Provo, Orem, Alpine or Salt Lake City and be frustrated if they are busy or skeptical of they are not. This dilemma raises some serious questions that may seem unrelated to your particular need.

Is the agent too busy for me and my needs? Is the agent not busy because of too little experience to stay busy? In this current real estate market and in the wake of bad news and sweeping reform proposals it is easy to hear the words, “the market is slow” or, “real estate is down” and assume that if an agent is not busy, the market is to blame. Do you prefer that agent who has plenty of time for your needs?

If you see where I am going with this, let your questions simmer as we consider these statistics as of a few minutes ago. They are derived from the Wasatch Front Regional Multiple Listing Service. It is the largest data base of local properties that are represented by REALTORS who are members of local boards of realtors who participate in the MLS service. This MLS includes all property types: residential, du/tri/fourplex, apartment buildings, land, commercial and farm/ranch properties. It includes properties from Nephi to Provo, Orem to Sandy, Tooele to Heber, Bountiful to Logan and beyond. There are 31,619 active property listings in that Wasatch Front Regional data base and 11,211 member agents representing those properties. The average of 2.82 properties listed per agent as of a few minutes ago is a fluctuating number, but it does give a good basis for what you might call “busy”. The MLS also indicates that since May 1, this year 3,653 of those properties have sold bringing the average of effective agents down to .65 transactions per agent (assuming that each transaction involved two agents). I use the recent month and a half to bring the number within reasonable measurability. Before that the numbers were even lower and now the news headlines (if you believe them)say we are within view of the end of the dismal tunnel. The market should be good or relatively better giving the “not so busy” agents the benefit of the doubt.

There are a few agents like myself who are very busy with listings numbering 10 times the average or more and transactions also at 10 or more times the average. We must be busier than the average in order to stay abreast of the market, the trends, the reforms and the needs of people like you. We are not too busy, just busy. We like to be busy. We are not the part-time or spare-time agents. We are the full time agents – the agents that are getting things done for their clients. Do we want to be busier? Of course! Especially with your business. And, in my case, I even want to be busy with your questions. I owe it to you to offer whatever expertise I have available.

The answer without any dilemma is, “Get the busy agent to help you.” What is the question?

Tags: Home Buyers, Housing Market, Listings, MLS, Real Estate Market, Sellers

Posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Real Estate Agent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.