According to a new survey from Merge and UCF, agents are not adequately justifying their commissions to clients.

By Peter Ricci

According to a new survey jointly conducted by the Department of Psychology at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and technology firm Merge, 64 percent of agents said they update clients weekly or several times weekly. But this communications effort doesn’t seem to cut it, as 74 percent of consumers surveyed think that real estate agents do not justify their commissions.

In addition to that survey, which sampled 304 individuals between the ages of 18 and 68, UCF and Merge also sampled 257 agents, and attempted explain why so many people would feel that agents are not worth the commissions they ultimately receive – and thankfully, the problem they uncovered is easily rectified.

Agents Commissions  – Do They Deserve Them?

The reason for that shockingly high number, UCF and Merge found, was that agents do not adequately demonstrate their value in the buying and selling process to their clients. In their survey of agents, they found:

• Sixty-four percent of respondents said they update clients weekly or several times weekly; only 14 percent, though, update them daily.
• Furthermore, an incredible 74 percent of the responding agents admitted they do not keep active lists of the work they perform for clients, while 15 percent occasionally keep lists and 11 percent always keep them.
• And when updating their clients on their properties, 79 percent of agents said they provide those updates via memory.

The result, the survey persuasively suggests, is a league of clients who feel left out of the process and unaware of what their real estate agents are accomplishing to justify their commissions. And the data is quite clear – 73 percent of the agents they sampled reported that after they sold their client’s listing, the client raised questions about their commission; and 64 percent reported that their clients complained about their commission.

What’s a Real Estate Agent To Do?

This all leads back to one central question – what can real estate agents do to better inform their clients on the work they do, and avoid any commission controversy? Merge, for its part, is actually the developer of a nifty app that tracks all the various tasks that real estate professionals perform for their clients.

As cool as the Merge app is (and it does look interesting), the truth is that you do not need another app to better communicate with your clients. Between cell phones, email and text messages, keeping in constant contact with your clients is easier now than ever; all it requires is diligence on the agents part.

It may be a coincidence, but 26 percent of consumers did report their agents justify their commissions – and 26 percent of agents told UCF/Merge that they maintain lists of the work they perform.