Brian Carter is a real estate broker with Majestic Properties in South Florida.
Every week, we ask a Miami real estate professional for their thoughts on the top stories from the week before.
This week, we talked with Brian Carter, a real estate broker with Majestic Properties in South Florida who is an expert in both residential and commercial real estate in Miami Beach, Brickell and Coconut Grove, among other markets. Carter has been in real estate since 2001, and last year, he was Majestic’s No. 2 agent in terms of sales volume.
Miami Agent (MA): Our feature story on the “Big 3” syndication sites (Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com) continues to generate interest from our readers; do you use any of those sites for your business, or do you find other marketing methods to be more affective?
Brian Carter (BC): I have to speak out of both sides of my mouth when covering my thoughts on those sites. From a Realtor standpoint in marketing, Majestic Properties does distribute our listings to those sites. So from the MLS it filters to Realtor.com, but our officer filters to Trulia and other sites. That said, it brings me business. I don’t pay for any ads on Realtor.com. I know some Realtors that pay for placements of their advertising on Trulia and other sites, and that may benefit them.
At the end of the day, the other side of the mouth is, when I take a look at it from a client perspective, when I’m contacted by a client, and they say they’ve been looking at such and such a site, I cringe, and explain to them that the best site to look at is Realtor.com, because they are the most accurate in reflecting what is on the market – and if something’s no longer on the market, they take it off. For whatever reason, Trulia is a big violator of that in my opinion, as are other sites. Stuff goes on their site, and it doesn’t come off in a timely manner, so it skews buyers’ opinion of where pricing is in the market.
MA: We had looked at some recent Redfin data on how quickly homes go under contract in Miami, and they found that quite a few homes here are going under contract very quickly after hitting the market. Is that consistent with what you’re seeing?
BC: It’s consistent, but if you want an explanation of why they’re going under contract so quickly – there’s the broad reality, which is that the market is much hotter and there is less inventory and a lot more people re-entering the buying process. If one were to dig deeper, though, it’s a fractured market.
If I have a market-rate listing, and it’s not distressed or a foreclosure, if I have a buyer, I’m going to try to give that buyer a shot, so I get both sides of the commission, or try to give a shot to the people in my office, so the commission is in my office before it hits the market. Most people will jump on that, knowing they have two-three years of appreciation that they will pick up just by buying that. So if something comes up in the area where I’m working, I usually have a buyer on a list looking, because it’s that type of market.
When it come to foreclosures and short sales, I think there’s a lot of self-serving, where agents are hooked up investors and there’s other money allegedly flowing back and forth. We as agents have to be careful with that. It’s one thing to make extra money through giving preferences to investors; I understand those agents want their deal to get done, and if they have an investor that’s always standing there with cash, that’s great. But as agents, you have to question those deals.