Words have power. With the risk that a property might remain unsold for months, hearing from showing agents is essential. A good word encourages the seller. A bad word arms the listing agent with feedback that can lower the home's asking price. The challenge is getting the word.

In a buyer's market, soliciting feedback is major challenge. Showing agents often don't respond to calls and when they do, they might not recall the property. The homeowner expects feedback. When "no word" is the standard response, the commitment of the listing agent is questioned. The net result is the house sits, overpriced and unsold.

What can be done to quickly solicit feedback from showing agents? Are there ways to simplify the laborious feedback process?

To address these concerns, listing agents are turning to online listing feedback services. Designed to automate the entire feedback process, these solutions are helping agents sell homes more quickly and become a champion for their customers. This white paper will explore the feedback challenges faced by listing agents and reveal the many benefits of online listing feedback services.

Trends Impacting Real Estate Agents

The wide-scale use of the Internet as a home selling tool and the sluggish housing market are two major trends impacting real estate agents.

The Internet is central to the home selling process. Nearly 80 percent of homebuyers are using the web to search for a home, according to a major study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Those tech savvy buyers are also typically selling a home.

The Internet has changed the face of real estate. "The real estate industry today bears little resemblance to the way we did business 10 years ago. It is hard to find another industry that has adopted technology so readily to its customers," said NAR president Thomas M. Stevens.

Real estate agents are moving to online tools to improve many aspects of the sales process. "Prudent, savvy real estate professionals are desperately looking for technology and proven systems that produce significant returns on investment, while providing increased levels of customer service," explained a report on planning for success in a down market. The report went on to explain that agents must automate much of the communications and follow-up process to succeed.

Even though the Internet is helping people sell homes, the fact remains that this is no longer a seller's market. For example, in the summer of 2007, U.S. home sales tumbled to a five-year low, mainly as a result of consumers who could not secure mortgages, according to the NAR.

Since a low of 4 percent in 2004, the prime rate has moved and stayed in the 8 percent range since 2006. In response to higher rates, many existing homeowners who opted for low adjustable rate loans are becoming delinquent. As a result, banks are tightening the standards for homeowners, making it harder for buyers to qualify. This has impacted the entire housing market. Robert Shiller, a Yale University professor, said, "The decline in housing sales could last for some years."

Feedback Challenges

Real estate agents face a number of challenges when feedback is absent. First, it is difficult to persuade homeowners to reduce their asking price. The time it takes to gather feedback is also more work than many agents are willing to take on. The net result is homeowners feel like their agents are not working to sell their homes.

Homeowners Won't Budge on Asking Price

In a down market, the right price is what brings many showing agents through the door. When a property is overpriced, soliciting feedback from the few agents who do visit the home is essential.

Consider an example where a listing agent picks up a new customer through a referral. The homeowner won't budge on the price and it's been challenging to sell the home. The agent explains the price is the source of the problem. The seller thinks he has a lousy agent and tells all his friends. A great referral suddenly leads to a bad reputation for the listing agent.

Telling sellers that their homes are overpriced is a sensitive issue. The goal in communicating negative feedback is to persuade homeowners to lower their asking prices, so their homes will sell. What's needed is an objective way to convey pricing feedback without offending homeowners.

Jumping Through Hoops for Feedback

Asking for feedback is a dreaded process for most agents. Many despise wasting time leaving messages or waiting for return calls that never come.

It's not uncommon for a showing agent to take days to return phone calls. By then, the shown property and feedback are no longer fresh in the agent's mind. No matter how the home is described, often agents can't recall it and feedback is dead on arrival.

"You have to spend hours on the phone, gathering responses from practitioners who visited the home, produce a report for the sellers, and then get an earful from clients who aren't so pleased with the comments they read," explains Michael Russer of Realtor Magazine Online. Russer goes on to explain that phone calls soliciting feedback average only a 20 percent success rate, after multiple contact attempts.

Providing feedback is a low priority for agents, especially when the feedback is negative. The showing agent may not want to convey negative feedback and the listing agent may not want to reveal comments to the homeowner. A simple way to solicit and provide feedback is needed.

Responding to Frustrated Homeowners

The home is not selling and the listing agent must explain why. When homeowners are calling and asking for feedback about showings, they expect immediate responses. If agents must explain that they've been unable to gather any feedback, the sellers begin to question their agent selection.

If some feedback was provided, it must be documented and translated into something presentable to the seller. Assembling feedback and delivering it to the homeowner is a lot of work.

Fortunately the feedback process is changing. A brief examination of the evolution of real estate feedback may provide insight into where the industry is headed.

Brief History of Listing Feedback Methods

The evolution of listing feedback closely follows the progression of communication technology. In the 1970s, nearly all home feedback required live contact with the showing agent. This typically required the listing agent or an assistant to track down showing agents--a challenging proposition.

As answering machines and voicemail gained popularity in the 1980s, the ability to leave messages emerged. This did not make gathering feedback much easier, but messages could be left to spur an agent to call back with feedback.

Cell phones became popular by the end of the 1980s, increasing the likelihood of live contact with an agent on the move. Email also gained popularity in the mid-1990s. However, many real estate agents did not have email accounts or did not publish them on their business cards until about 2001.

By 2001, online tools such as Realtor.com were gaining popularity. The first online listing feedback solution emerged this year as well.

Today, real estate agents are utilizing mobile devices such as laptops, PDAs and smart phones to access the Internet and respond to messages. Advanced services have emerged that tap the latest technology to ensure feedback is gathered from agents automatically--sometimes as quickly as 1 hour after a showing.

The Solution: Online Listing Feedback

Designed to eliminate the need for endless phone calls, online listing feedback services automate the entire feedback process. As a result, agents are armed with comments that can help lower a home's asking price while the homeowner feels engaged in the sales process.

Online listing feedback services handle everything, including contacting the showing agent, collecting feedback and presenting results to the homeowner. Now feedback can be delivered to homeowners within an hour of showing, without any listing agent involvement.

Leveraging email and powerful online tools, the feedback process is now taken to an entirely new level.

Here's how it works:

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