The Art of the CMA: Win Hearts, Minds, and Loyalty by Mastering Real Estate’s Most Versatile Tool

But Robertson says that what we know about CMAs is the tip of the iceberg and “that a lot of people have underestimated what a CMA could do for their (real estate) business.” As co-founder of W+R Studios, a U.S.-based tech company focussed on creating software for CMA technology, Robertson has had many conversations with agents over the years.  During this time, he has mined creative ways in which CMAs can be re-used. He has concluded that CMAs have an unrealized potential that goes beyond just a primary comps report used by selling agents. “I thought there’s a story there. There’s something that a lot of agents can learn from,” he says.

The book is Robertson’s first foray into authorship and like many debuting writers, it’s about what he knows best. With catchy chapter titles, the book is laid out with a plethora of whys and how-tos of the CMA through easy-to-read page-turners, replete with bullet points, charts, snappily titled section-breaks, examples of Robertson’s anecdotal encounters in the real estate industry and end-of-chapter summaries. As such, his book is no different than other business books that follow the same content marketing-informed formula.

But what’s worth reading are the wealth of evidence-based insights Robertson compiles for new and veteran agents alike, who are becoming increasingly wary of            competing with prop tech, Zestimates and ibuyers taking over the home selling process.

“The book is a blueprint on engagement with the lifeblood of an agent’s career – the consumer. The book gives you the strategy and mindset to do more with the information and tools already at your fingertips. Read it. Mark it up and read it again. You won’t be disappointed,” reviewed one reader.

The book helps agents take the guesswork out of pricing and valuing homes, de-mystifies data storytelling, informs on how to use data visualizations to achieve an edge on sales and breaks down the anatomy of a CMA, completed with a script for a successful listing presentation. Robertson even ends the book with findings from his company’s 2020 report on best practices for CMAs and listing presentations. Amassed from a survey completed by 3,325 participants, the report concludes that 67 per cent of respondents feel that CMAs are gaining more in relevance, as we look towards a tech-powered real estate future.

“There’s a way of using CMAs traditionally once you’ve acquired business – where you are sitting in front of a seller and you’re presenting this report – but people don’t look at it as them being a way to acquire business, to generate business. And that’s why I think there are people who want to read this book as a way of generating business, not just using in business you’ve already generated,” says Robertson.

“Think of your CMA presentation as a piece of sheet music. All the notes are there, but you are one who will create the music, build emotional connections and add the nuances and the artistry that makes for a truly memorable experience. Most agents won’t take the time to craft such a customer experience,” he writes in The Art of the CMA.

The book is available at Amazon and directly from the authors.

Sohini Bhattacharya

Sohini Bhattacharya is a contributing writer for REM.

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Shortly after earning his degree in history and political science, Stephen left his home in Saint John, N.B. to spend a couple of years in Ottawa, working on Parliament Hill as an assistant to former Prime Minister Joe Clark. When he returned home and launched his real estate career, Stephen stayed involved with politics, eventually becoming president of New Brunswick Progressive Conservatives in 2012.

Now as president of CREA, this experience has paid off, he says.

“Having worked on the Hill, when I sit down with people during our lobbying, there is an identifiable mutual respect,” he says. “I understand that one meeting isn’t going to result in an actionable item the next day – there is a process. I’ve been on the other side of the desk.”

Stephen says he used to “get asked all the time if my political background hindered my business, but I have a fairly healthy list of people who have identified as Liberals who are clients.”

Stephen has been using his skills to help advance CREA’s position on “the No. 1 issue I hear no matter what part of the country I’m in” – the mortgage stress test.

“We have always advocated for a strong housing market. A housing crisis in Canada is not good for Realtors,” he says. “People in Alberta have lost the ability to sell their house now because buyers are not in the marketplace. Certainly where I’m from, Saint John is always in the top five most affordable markets in Canada and for those people to be stress tested at the level they are, it just doesn’t make any sense. It’s not good economic policy. You can’t paint the whole country with one brush.

“We also live in a world where you are tested on the highest posted rate. Ninety per cent of the people negotiate a better rate when they go to the bank. It’s just not a realistic picture, even if rates rise over a five-year stretch.”

Advocacy is one of three major focuses for Stephen during his year as president – the other two are improving the reputation of Realtors and continuing to develop technology to better serve Realtors (such as through improvements to WEBforms and Realtor.ca).

On the reputation front, Stephen says the Board of Directors has spent a lot of time “doubling down on the Realtor Code.”

He says, “Every Realtor out there is advocating for a higher professional standard.” Working with regulators, he says, “We understand that it’s our obligation to clean up the behaviour” of some CREA members, but that the regulators would like to see more from the industry. “We really need to double down and have an enforceable code that is enforced the same way in Kootenay as in St. John’s and everywhere in between.”

He says that by focusing on the experience of consumers when dealing with a Realtor, the industry will improve its reputation and “then it’s going to be more money in the pockets of our members at the end of the day.”

Stephen isn’t too concerned with the impact of so-called “disruptors” to the real estate industry, such as iBuyers. “People rely more on the knowledge and advice than what the real estate (brokerage) model is. If you want to sell your house yourself, fine, but you need to understand what’s going on in the whole market. It’s the same discussion over sold price data – just having a sold price doesn’t explain the whole market picture. Why did Jason’s house sell for that?”

He notes that since sold data began appearing in New Brunswick, “the need for Realtors has just gone up,” as consumers seek reliable data from a trusted source.

When he was president of the Saint John Real Estate Board in 2010, “we were going through the Competition Board changes and the world was going to fall apart then. The membership was very uneasy about how things were going to go down.”

But keeping up with the latest tech is critical, he says. “I’ve been in the business for 20 years. When I started, it was acceptable to call people back two days later. The MLS system was a book. We would walk into the brokerage on a Monday and the administrator would say, here are your emails – printed out. And each email would ask that you call them – it was never two-way!”

Serving as CREA president takes up a lot of time and energy, and Stephen says he never would have tackled the job without the encouragement of his wife Heather, who is also his team’s executive assistant. But he says he is tying to do things a little differently by delegating some of his requests for appearances and by taking a more team-based approach at the board.

“I’m a 44-year-old full-service Realtor in Saint John. I run a small real estate team (at Royal LePage Atlantic) and I have a 14-year-old and an 11-year-old and a wife who still loves me. I have to take that balance.” He’s also spent nine years on the seasons ticket waiting list for the New England Patriots.

“I never thought I would be president of CREA. I just wanted to be on the Federal Affairs Committee and then I got on the committee and I guess people saw how I acted around the table and encouraged me to run.”

Why should Realtors get involved in organized real estate?

“I tell people they are shortchanging themselves if they don’t get involved with a local board,” says Stephen. In terms of the perks of being CREA president, he says “the ability to be connected into the discussions” of real estate across the country “will make you a better Realtor for your clients.”

He’s also enjoyed touring the country, visiting places such as Timmins, Ont., which he figures he would have never seen if he wasn’t president. And he’s also had some unique opportunities, such as when he was recently called upon to introduce former U.S. president George W. Bush at conference.

“It’s been a remarkable experience,” he says.

Jim Adair

Jim Adair is the Managing Editor of REM Real Estate Magazine. Contact Jim by email.

www.remonline.com

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I’ve talked to quite a few agents about this, and their responses to this change seem to be across the board. From, “They’re going to destroy the industry” at one end of the spectrum all the way to “They’ve helped me make a bunch of money” at the other end and everything in between.

I wanted to find out exactly what’s changing, and what that means for you as a real estate agent, so I went directly to an agent who is working with iBuyers to make himself and his team more money. To help us get the facts straight we have a special interview with Kenny Klaus – a top-performing real estate agent and team leader in Phoenix who has successfully incorporated iBuyers into his business.

Don’t have time for the full interview? Here are five points you shouldn’t miss.

1. iBuyers = cash offers.

At the core, iBuyers give home sellers direct access to cash (or immediate) offers for their home. So treat them just like you have a handful of investors in your back pocket – because you do! Just because a seller can get a cash offer doesn’t mean they want to replace their trusted advisor. If anything, sellers want their trusted advisor to educate them about all of their home-selling options, and that should definitely include an immediate offer, even if it’s not the one they decide to go with. If you don’t tell them this option is available and they find out on their own, you’re going to lose credibility and may even look like you’re hiding something.

2. Get educated.

Kenny made a great comment during our interview: “Don’t let them eat your lunch. Go eat lunch with them.” iBuyers are becoming an important part of the market and it doesn’t look like they’ll be going anywhere anytime soon. Agents that are embracing the change have been able to make more money by working with iBuyers, instead of against them. When you can’t fight ‘em, join them! So take some time to meet any iBuyers who are working in your area.

3. Face it head on.

When Kenny and his agents started bringing up iBuyers in their listing presentations, sellers would often go get the print-out for the immediate offers they had already received online. What’s worse is in some situations we’ve heard about sellers not working with an agent because they had already received an offer online and the agent didn’t even bring it up as an option. Instead of trying to hide iBuyers from consumers, your best bet is to make them part of your process and discuss them directly and honestly (see Takeaway #1).

4. “Offer conversations” instead of listing presentations.

Within Kenny’s team, they’ve changed their approach from using a classic listing presentation to what he calls an “offer conversation.” They’re able to use immediate offers from iBuyers as part of the discussion for selling a home. Then, after presenting the available offers he also discusses the other options for listing the home and what might be best for the seller. This is a great way to both position yourself as an expert and differentiate yourself from other agents in your market.

5. Sellers are buyers.

In many cases, people selling their home also need to purchase another home. Whether or not they’re using an iBuyer to sell their home, you have an opportunity to work with them on multiple deals. Don’t forget that!

Alex Camelio

As the CEO of Agent Inner Circle, Alex Camelio focuses on the development and growth of the community. Prior to selling his company to Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies, Alex was the co-founder and president at Barcode Realty. Within the real estate community, he has been recognized internationally as an expert in technology, marketing and entrepreneurship and has presented for various national organizations.

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“The way consumers buy and sell homes is radically changing, and 2020 will be the year that more will recognize these fundamental shifts happening within real estate,” says Stefan Swanepoel, chairman and CEO of T3 Sixty and the report’s editor-in-chief. “The industry is changing more and faster now than it has in decades, something that becomes abundantly clear when reading this study.”

The Swanepoel Trends Report says that “after fundamentally altering other industries, venture capital and technology are now rocking the residential real estate brokerage industry. By fueling new models, consolidation and ways of delivering services, these powerful forces are changing the way consumers buy and sell real estate forever,” it says.

With iBuying, “a controversial and powerful new real estate model used by Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor and a growing list of other companies every day, consumers can sell or buy a new home in as soon as three days with all cash and choose their closing date. The model brings transparency, simplicity and certainty to a transaction that historically has been lengthy, confusing and complicated,” says the report.

It says the trend has evolved from a seller-focused model to one that serves buyers and, increasingly, synchronous sellers – those sellers who are also buying a home. New companies are offering an increasing number of twists on the model, it says.

The study looks at three companies – Zillow Group, Compass and Keller Williams Realty – that “have made huge bets on the future by essentially pushing all of their chips to the centre of the table with aggressive, company-changing moves.”

REM Editorial Team

realestatemagazine.ca

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“Currently these companies are crushing it,” says Ed DePrato of Sweetly in Edmonton, who is launching his own iBuyer brokerage. “They’re dominating the market. They’re already controlling more than 10 per cent of the available inventory in the cities where they operate.”

Ed DePrato

He says, “What iBuyer does is save the consumer all of the costs and headaches and hassles normally associated with being for sale. When you’re selling your home, the goal is to be sold. Being for sale is no fun.

“With an iBuyer there’s no interruption in your life. You simply go onto a website, answer a series of questions . . . It takes about 20 minutes and you can add a bunch of pictures if you want, pictures that help us understand the condition of your home. You can even submit information on what makes your home unique, what makes it more valuable or more desirable. Once we get that information we consider that information and weigh it against anything else for sale or sold recently in your neighbourhood and we come up with a value and make you an offer online – all without ever seeing your property.”

If a seller decides to accept the offer, they can set the closing date. The buyer isn’t moving into the home because it is simply buying it to re-sell the property. DePrato says his company’s fee will be eight per cent of the value of the property.

DePrato says this online way of doing real estate is the wave of the future because people are so used to doing everything online these days, from buying clothes and food to booking travel.

“Heck, we even find love online,” he says. “It’s a way for people to trade in their home just like they would trade in a car.”

Properly, a Toronto-based real estate technology startup, launched an iBuyer program in Calgary last year, and recently announced that it has secured funding to expand to Edmonton and other Canadian cities. The company says in a news release that it is “buying or selling a home nearly every day and growing rapidly.”

“There’s been a lack of innovation around real estate in Canada, but that’s changing with Properly,” says Gavin Myers, general partner of Prudence Holdings. “Investing in Properly was a clear choice because they’re providing the services homeowners want – convenience and transparency – while eliminating the pain points of selling a home.”

Properly offers a price match guarantee, which means if the home sells for more than Properly’s offer, “the majority of the upside is refunded to the customer,” the company says. “Properly’s service provides certainty, convenience and transparency, eliminating common issues associated with a home sale – inconvenient home showings, costly repairs, uncertain timelines and the risk of the offer falling through,” the company says.

Ross Kay of Ross Kay Realty Consultants in Burlington, Ont. says the iBuyer concept is simply a guaranteed sales initiative like many other ones in the market today.

“It’s just a scam. They’re trying to make the legacy brokerage model look as if it’s not legacy any longer when all they’re doing is rehashing old technologies, old approaches that have been around for four decades,” says Kay.

“Any guaranteed sales program, which is just what an iBuyer is, is structured so that the brokerage really cannot lose money. You’re not really giving them a market value price. Traditionally market value means the Realtor will try to sell your house for more money than what the neighbour sold for. Historically, that’s what market value has meant in organized real estate. Each new property you try to get a higher price. In the iBuyer program, it’s based on the old prices,” says Kay.

Cliff Stevenson, co-owner of Re/Max First Calgary and currently vice president of CREA, says the No. 1 reason for the proliferation of iBuyers on the market is convenience.

“There’s an argument to be made that the selling process can be challenging from a logistical perspective and preparing your home, doing repairs, maintenance, setting it up with your Realtor for showings, accommodating showings… The house could be on the market for quite awhile. There’s a convenience element for it for sure,” says Stevenson.

“There’s also a timing element for some people. Some of these iBuyer programs are able to complete the transaction relatively quickly for sellers – if somebody needs to get out or needs to know their number today and get out right away and move on somewhere else. The iBuyer option may work for them because they’re now having a very quick process as opposed to something that could take some time.”

But the main disadvantage, says Stevenson, is that a seller is not taking advantage of the pool of buyers on the open market.

“You don’t have exposure to the broad market to understand what your potential market value truly is,” he says. “But the other thing is that consumers have proven over the years that the advice they receive from a real estate professional is a huge part of the transaction. They want advice. They’re looking for ways to strategize the selling process. There’s an absence of that in many of these iBuyer models and you don’t have a trusted advisor like a Realtor to navigate through the process. You’re sort of on your own.”

CREA president Jason Stephen of Royal LePage Atlantic in Saint John, N.B., says the attraction of iBuyer programs is that it can be seen as an easier process for home sellers.

“The downside is at the end of the day, does somebody really know they’re getting full value for their house?” says Stephen.

“It’s like any real estate transaction. There’s risk and reward…My only concern is that homeowners should really understand what the true market value is on their house because they could be leaving a lot of money on the table. That’s why we point people to seeking advice from a professional Realtor. One of the jobs of a professional Realtor is to make sure that the transaction is easy and smooth but it’s very complex.”

In Atlanta, Ga., a traditional real estate brokerage is competing with the iBuyers with what it calls an instant offer comparison tool. The brokerage gathers instant move offers from companies such as Opendoor, Zillow and Offerpad, and then compares them to the estimated cost of a traditional sale using their company.

“We treat instant offer companies just like any other buyers and, in limited cases, an instant offer may be the best option for the seller,” says Craig McClelland, vice president of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Metro Brokers. “But in other cases, the convenience fees aren’t worth the lost equity. We pull together the information on the homeowner’s behalf, so they see the entire picture. That way, they can make an informed decision on how to sell what’s generally their most expensive asset.”

Mario Toneguzzi

Mario Toneguzzi is a contributing writer for REM. He has more than 40 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist, and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald, covering sports, crime, politics, health, faith, city and breaking news, and business. He now works on his own as a freelance writer for several national publications and consultant in communications and media relations/training. Mario was named in 2021 as one of the Top 10 Business Journalists in the World by PR News – the only Canadian to make the list.

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