The HomeSmith Awards

Under quarantine, you find yourself embarking on more non-essential exploratory tasks than normal. You’ve no doubt seen countless realtors with row after row of awards and accolades in their signatures. It’s just our special way of saying, “Work with me, I’m a winner! I’m really experienced!” These awards are often pretty hollow though, because these award companies are for-profit businesses too. The realtors usually have to pay to be a candidate, and most paying, completed applications do end up getting the award. Surprise, surprise. Then those award companies try to sell the recipients dozens of other products after getting the accolade. The award companies basically award you so they have someone to sell to. Anyway, with the higher broker status I have, I have systems access to look up the stats of all Austin agents. Shamelessly, I’ve decided to give myself some awards! ? I hate the braggy part of this business, but I am indeed applying for a job here. These are a few bullets for my resume, and I’d be happy to present the raw data as proof to anyone who is interested.

-Top 1% Agent, Homes Bought in 2019

-Top 2% Agent, Homes Sold in 2019

-Top 5%, Total Real Estate Volume in 2019

-Top 50 Couple Agent Team 2019

There are some interesting notes about these stats as well. These stats would all be much higher if certain things were taken into account.

A) Most of the “agents” on the top 50 list are kind of… sort of… well, cheating. They have huge teams (or even entire brokerages) that put all contracts under their own single name. They themselves participate in or oversee few or no transactions over the course of a year. They merely label their transaction differently than the rest of us do.

B) Several people on the top ten lists are merely a nameplate for the biggest builders in the nation. DR Horton, Lennar, etc want their homes to be on the MLS, and in many cases, to do so they signed exclusive contracts with one single agent. That builder’s single agent also almost never participates in the transaction itself, for the most part, and just sits back and collects the stats.

C) The relative volume of sales we’re doing, we’ve been doing year after year. We’re not flashes in the pan agents or newly compiled team structures as some on the list are.

D) Although we do many luxury home sales, we do not exclusively sell luxury homes. Many of the top “volume” producers actually sell much fewer homes than we do, but the difference is they decline average range buyers and sellers. We do not.

E) Hillary and I do work as a team, and so if you combine our experience and production, the statistics increase even more. Our combined real estate volume is in the top 75 list, and and easily top 50 if some of the above factors are taken into account and adjusted out.

Again, as I’d mentioned, it always feel uncomfortable strutting our peacock feathers, but I suppose anyone applying for a job has to do basically the same thing. I’m telling you, my employer, “I’m right for this job because I know what I’m doing. We have immense experience and network of buyers and sellers that give you an advantage. We have marketing skills and processes that set us apart from the rest, and get the job DONE! Really, you should hire me.”