It is a pleasure to welcome Jonathan Dalton to this hot dog stand. It has been a couple of years since Jonathan has written for the Weenie and this is the perfect occasion to remind everyone that if they have something to say they can say it on the Weenie.
This afternoon I went to the Mongolian BBQ place down the block from my house. As I perused the various vegetables and meats available, I couldn’t help but wonder about the impact my decisions were going to have on the real estate consumer.
For those who don’t know, I am a real estate professional and my every waking thought, my every action is for the benefit of the consumer.
So I had to think to myself … if I were to take a half-bowl of mushrooms or the last of the chicken, am I disadvantaging a real estate consumer who, in the midst of their home search, might walk into the same restaurant and want those mushrooms or that chicken? Could I be so selfish as to consider myself?
Because we are real estate professionals we are held to an incredibly high standard. Sure, the marketing ads from the National Association of REALTORS talk about our adherence to the voluminous Code of Ethics but it doesn’t stop there.
If you have the good misfortune of tripping over one of our constant debates on social media sites, you’ll see that everything we do in our lives must be done with the consumer at mind. Never are we permitted the lowly decision of making a business decision based solely on what is good for own business; all decisions must be for the greater good of the real estate consumer, whether it’s our use of IDX listing data, our decision to syndicate our real estate listing data or our choice of color schemes on our websites. The consumer may not like orange as much as we do and we have to take that into account.
It’s a remarkable standard, all in all. For instance, when the gas station down the block raised the price of unleaded by five cents in the morning only to lower it three cents in the afternoon, I couldn’t bring myself to believe the manager considered the ramifications on the public. Shocking!
When Michaels raised the price of the personal notes I use from $1.50 for 6 from $1 for 8, they clearly did not consider the impact doubling the cost per note would have on the public. Selfishly, they likely only considered their own business costs and sought to maximize profit. Stunning!
Though several fast-food restaurants have learned we need to satiate our obesity by having delicious breakfast products available all day, McDonald’s clearly does not care what the buying public wants because breakfast ends at 10:30 a.m. as it has since 1824. Absurd!
And don’t even get me started on those folks most insensitive to the needs of the consumers, the Girl Scouts and their damned limited-edition, cartel-distributed Thin Mints. Scandalous!
Thankfully, we real estate professionals are not permitted to think this way. We can’t run our business only as a business because we work directly with you, the public. The last thing on earth we want to do is give people to impression we chose this career in the hope of making money, providing for our families or other such trivial reasons.
We’re here solely for the public and whatever the consumer needs, no matter how counterintuitive it may be, we’re here to provide it for them.