CleanOffer’s Agent-Client Relationship Statement Survey Results

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

As Director of Sales at CleanOffer, I am always soliciting feedback from our users. A common concern from agents is the “Agent-Client Relationship” statement that a client must accept in order to register.  Unlike lead-generating public websites, CleanOffer was designed for the serious buyer, and from what we’ve seen virtually all serious home buyers want to work with an agent. We believe that the statement is important, but we still wanted to address the valid concerns of some of our members, so we conducted a survey last November to determine if we needed to make any changes.

With 46% of the agents surveyed responding, 52% said we should keep it as is, 30% said we should make it optional (i.e. let the agent choose whether to require it), and only 18% said we should eliminate it completely.

This issue is a hot topic that produces an emotional response. From the comments we received, the majority who want to keep it strongly feel a commitment from clients is reasonable: after all they are paying to provide the service to their clients for free and real estate is what they do for a living. Requiring clients to at least say they are intending to work with them doesn’t seem too much to ask. The biggest reason why some agents want it optional (or want it removed) is because they worry about the reaction of prospective clients to the statement.

From the clients’ side, we often get questions like “what is it for?” and “does this bind me legally?”. The statement benefits clients too, in that it is one of the arguments we use to persuade the MLS’s to allow clients who use CleanOffer to search all the listings on the MLS - by using the agent-client relationship statement to show the MLS that clients on CleanOffer are definitely working with an MLS member agent.  While the statement is not legally binding, in agreeing to it most clients are being honest that they are working with that agent, and that in turn means that the agents can devote time and money to helping these clients with added confidence that a transaction will likely result. That’s good for the clients too.

We would like some feedback from agents that use it effectively to help your fellow agents:

1.  How do you present it?

2.  Do you have to explain it, or are clients generally willing to accept the agreement in exchange for agent level access to the MLS?

3.  Any advice to agents having trouble getting clients to agree?

We’d also love to get feedback from any clients reading this post about their perception of the statement when they signed up.

We do believe the Agent-Client relationship statement has value and our survey seems to show that a majority of the agents agree.