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...whether they are dealing with Health Care or Real Estate Services.

I was chatting with a friend of mine last week when he admitted that he had been without health insurance since he got out of college. Given that he's a real estate agent, that's not so surprising: as an independent contractor he's on his own regarding health insurance and many in our industry have simply taken their chances, especially when they are young and healthy like my friend Jack.

But as part of the approximately 15% of Americans who are uninsured, Jack has a window on a phenomenon that few of the rest of us ever see: what health services actually cost. You see, Jack was playing softball one Saturday a couple of weeks ago and sprained his ankle. As luck would have it, a member of the team was a physician and offered to take a look at the ankle at his office. After his ankle was wrapped up, Jack offered to pay him. 

But here's the interesting phenomenon: the doctor-teammate didn't have a clue as to what to charge him because he had no clue as to what his services were worth! As any doctor today will tell you: their charges are handled by insurance. And the truth is that if the good doctor had not been playing softball with him, Jack's lack of insurance would have dictated that he wouldn't be going to a doctor's office at all - rather he would have to go to the ER if he wanted his ankle looked at and the cost of his care at the ER would have been absorbed by the insured.

Meanwhile, most of us who have health insurance never ask a doctor what they charge because we don't pay for the lion's share of our care - insurance does, so we have been quietly oblivious until the last few years.

So, what does this have to do with real estate?

As I write this, the US government is embroiled in wrangling over how to overhaul our health care system. It seems to me that the system is not so much broken as it is hopelessly dated because as times changed, it never adapted. Our health care system was designed in years past, when you would hold a job for a lifetime. In that world, it made perfect sense to have your health care as a benefit of that job. But how many of us today stay in one job for our entire lives? And what about the growing legions of independent contractors and self employed entrepreneurs who have no access to a "company" plan? Health care tied to one's employment makes about as much sense in today's world as using a typewriter to write a letter.

Likewise, in the real estate industry, we continue to practice in a way that is not so much broken but hopelessly outdated. The traditional sales model was conceived in years past when we, as real estate practitioners had a very different role. If you think about it, real estate as a sales profession, paid by commission, made total sense when the agent's only job was to "move the merchandise". But in the 1990's our national and state associations expanded our role - it was no longer enough to simply sell the product, we now were asked to act as fiduciaries: working in the best interest of our client and putting their needs above all others, including, and most especially our own. In fact, our responsibilities as a fiduciary became a part of the NAR's (National Association of Realtors®) code of ethics that we are obliged to adhere to.

Yet, when our role was expanded and fundamentally changed, when we were asked to provide objective counsel that was in the client's best interest, no attention was given to how this new role fit with a compensation system that is geared toward salespeople who are free to work in their own best interest. Consequently, real estate professionals today are put in an impossible bind that no amount of "ethics training" can address: we are being asked to provide objective counsel that is in the best interest of our client when how much we are paid, (or whether we are paid at all) is wholly dependent on the client's decisions which we are advising them on!

I'm not in the book review business but I have to tell you that I just got through reading World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott and it is an amazing book!

As I posted on Facebook last night:

"I've been struggling with how to get my book and company more noticed without much in the way of funds, and after reading this book, I feel like I have a new lease on life and work. If you know me at all, you know I don't swoon over much but this book is incredible."

Like many of us ACRE®s, David challenges the conventional wisdom on how to bring online eyeballs to whatever you do. I found myself nodding my head and saying YES! out loud.

AND...if you want to get a taste of what I'm "raving" about, you can go to his site and download his free e-book that started it all: The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How Word of Mouse Spreads Your Ideas for Free.

But, it gets better...

Despite years of advertising by the National Association of Realtors® and an increasing number of required ethics courses, most recent polls continue to show real estate agents at the bottom of the consumer trust list behind insurance agents and barely beating out stockbrokers. When asked in the most recent Harris Poll "If you were getting professional help or advice from each of the following, how much would you trust them to give you advice which was best for you?", only 20% of respondents indicated that they trusted the advice of real estate agents completely.

But why in the world should this surprise us? As long as we insist on being paid exclusively by commission, what we are asking the consumer to believe is that we can provide objective counsel that is in THEIR best interest when our compensation is wholly dependent on an outcome that we're advising them on!

The news out there for real estate continues to be bleak. Falling home prices, long market times, falling sales, credit issues for buyers, the list goes on. If you've been in the business awhile, seeing the ups and downs, you might be trying to hang in there while the "newbies" who jumped into the market in the last five years are steadily abandoning real estate for greener pastures.

But sometimes, even for us veterans, it's hard to keep up our confidence. Our industry is going through tremendous challenges with changes that aren't going to disappear once the current market recovers. That's because the changes we are seeing are systemic in nature, challenging our most basic real estate assumptions and practices.

This past week, a real estate agent opined in her blog that when agents make a practice of asking a buyer for a pre-approval, or even request that they sign a buyer agency agreement to show a commitment on their part, that this is a sign of "disrespect" to the consumer.

She further went on to say that she herself has used the services of real estate agents in the past and if any of them had asked upfront for evidence of her financial qualifications or willingness to make a commitment, she'd have found someone else who showed her the respect she believed she deserved as a consumer. I read her post and was frankly, speechless. And when I found at least two dozen comments from other agents on her blog exclaiming what a great post she made and how they agreed with her a hundred percent, I was even more so.

Sheesh! Is there any profession other than real estate that considers it "disrespectful" to ask that their time and expertise be valued? Is it so outlandish to have the expectation that if you do your job well and help the client to achieve their goals that you have the right (horror of horrors) to get paid? And why pray tell, in an industry that traditionally asks for no upfront fees and where one is required to pay all expenses such as (hmm, I don't know, maybe GAS!) out of pocket, it is somehow "disrespectful" to actually ask for some kind of a commitment to work exclusively so that when the consumer actually finds their home, that you can get paid for your efforts?!?!

Recently on the ACRE® Coaching Exchange, our coaching platform for ACRE® graduates, we had a very interesting discussion about where our value today lies as agents. It seems that in the tough market that we are working in, many agents are competing for listings by charging less than the competition and requiring less commitment in the way of an exclusive agency contracts with buyers.

This is so sad because you can never compete on price and stay in business. No matter how low you go, there will always be some desperate soul who will charge less. And when you don't require a commitment from those you work with, you only underscore that your time, experience, and expertise has no value.

In my book Ripping the Roof off Real Estate, I talk about the difference between a commodity, which can and should be shopped by price and a service where the quality, level of expertise, talent or experience makes a big difference in the outcome. When an agent or brokerage competes on price, they reinforce the perception by the public that agents are all the same, a commodity, and therefore they should be shopped by price. However, when a real estate professional understands and articulates their value, the consumer will beat a path to their door and the competition will be left in the dust.

If you are out in the market trying to make a living in real estate, I don't need to tell you that our industry continues to go through tremendous changes that are challenging our most basic of real estate practices and assumptions:

• Revolutionary growth in technology which continues to transform our industry.

• A huge consumer backlash that, contrary to conventional wisdom, is not just challenging our commissions but challenging our very value as professionals.

• A growing bewilderment by both the consumer and ourselves over what exactly our role as real estate professionals today is supposed to be.

Yet, in the midst of all of this, when we clearly need some new direction, it seems like all we're getting is the same old advice from the same pundits that have been around forever saying the same things like:

Last week, in "Broker proposes new real estate marketing platform: Universal MLS", Inman News Writer Glenn Roberts discussed a "Universal MLS" that is the brainchild of Colorado real estate broker Creed Smith, a specialist in bank-owned foreclosure properties. A real estate broker since 1987 who has a master's degree in marketing, Smith said his vision for a new breed of MLS is based on his belief that real estate agents and brokers will inevitably play a lesser role in real estate transactions as Web-based services become increasingly popular with consumers.

Mollie, Merv and Paula will attend the Inman News "Real Estate Connect" conference in San Francisco July 30th through August 3rd.

The Inman conferences are the premier networking, information, and technology conferences for the real estate industry.

Executive-level real estate professionals, opinion leaders, technology giants, industry experts, and press gather each year at Connect Conferences to discuss a broad cross-section of traditional and cutting-edge topics critical to the real estate industry, opening the door to a wealth of opportunities for business development, information and idea exchange, discussion and debate.

In a recent article, the founder of a leading online real estate referral site, tried to make the case to beleaguered real estate agents that buying leads is good for their business and intimated that failure to buy these leads from third party companies (such as theirs) is to miss out on business.

First, let's start with the basic premise - I agree with them that there is a cost to agents of obtaining business. Whether they do old-fashioned farming, mailings, phone calls, or put your resources into your client base and get your business from referrals, business has to come from somewhere and it has a monetary cost.

My colleague and good friend Allyson Hoffman, like many of us, was dismayed by the incredible slant and half-truths that filled this past Sunday's 60 minutes segment Chipping Away At Realtors' Six Percent. But, in her blog, she focused on something that I also believe needs some clarification - the issue of the minimum service requirements that some states, including Ally's home state of Illinois, require. There was so much misinformation and lack of full reporting in this story that I could easily blog on different aspects for weeks, but like Ally, I would like to focus on the concept of minimum service requirements.

Zillow is now offering a "great deal" to agents: you can post your listings for FREE! What great exposure, and how kind of Zillow to offer such a wonderful service to agents without taking a dime-what a nice company!

The papers and newsmagazines have been filled of late with articles about the crisis in Sub-Prime loans issued over the last few years. Seems as though many buyers took out loans that they clearly should not have: loans that sucked them in with a great interest rate for the first year or so and then boom! A monthly payment that doubled or worse and sending many new homeowners into forclosure and financial ruin.