Broker Leigh Thomas Brown says brokers facing lawsuits and DOJ scrutiny need two things: frequent agent meetings to explain market changes, and a customized policies manual covering dress codes, ethics, compensation, and buyer-agency forms. Each office must tailor it to its market and culture.
Hello, broker friends. You may be experiencing some frustrations in light of all the structural changes happening to real estate, especially as concerns these lawsuits, the settlements, where the DOJ comes walking in and declaring their own things. So, as a broker, what are you supposed to do and create a good office environment for whatever the future of real estate looks like? Well, here's the number one most important thing. And I've said this before, I'll say it again, you have to talk to your agents. Be available to them. Have Zoom meetings if you need to, in-person meetings, obviously the best, but make sure that you're finding out what your agents are hearing from buyers and sellers in your marketplace, and you're guiding them in how best to explain things so that the consumer understands exactly what's going on and that they can still engage a professional REALTOR® if they so choose. That's our job as brokers, is to be super great communicators. The number 2 most important thing you can be doing right now, this involves your policies and procedures manual. Now, some of y'all belong to national franchises and your franchise may give you a policy and procedure manual. Hmm, here's my question for you. And I don't know who I'm talking to, but I'm looking at you right now. Did you actually read the one that came from your franchise brand? Did you edit it to look like your local marketplace? Did you personalize it? To the culture that you've built in your office? If not, go get after that. Now, I'm going to talk to my independent broker owners. Mm-hmm. A lot of y'all don't have policies and procedures manuals. And how do I know this? Because I teach a lot of classes and I run into a lot of brokers that say, "Um, I, uh, what?" They don't have a policies and procedures manual. Now, some people have been misguided by employment law and they think, "Well, my agents are 1099s. I can't have policies and procedures." Yes, you can. You absolutely can. You just can't dictate their minute-by-minute, day-by-day schedules. You can actually tell them that you have expectations on professional dress. You can tell them you have expectations on the way that they present things in public and that you have expectations on their guidelines when it comes to abiding by the local restrictions, by the state regulatory body, the Real Estate Commission, by the REALTOR® Code of Ethics. If you're not a REALTOR® broker, you probably have different level of expectations as well. But you You can lay all those things out in your policy and procedure manual. For example, one of the things that I expect as a broker is that my agents will be professionally dressed in public when they are conducting professional real estate. Now, that's left up to a lot of freedom because professional dress, if somebody's showing land, is different than if they are showing a condo in downtown Charlotte. It's going to be different from time to time. I totally get that because to me, Professional dress is just being elevated beyond where your clients are. So that if the neighbor is looking out their front window, they can tell which one is the REALTOR®, all right? That is a basic policy in my office, and I think it is reasonable. I also have as part of that policy that we can't have cleavage flying around. I don't think that is a professional look. Your office may be different than mine, but you get to set those policies and procedures. Now, in that policy and procedure manual, you should probably address how compensation works in your office, How do agents get compensated? Who does what? How do you look at the forms? Most importantly, I'm already going to guess this is in there, but just make sure it's in there. I'm sure that fees in your office are and have been negotiable. Just make sure that's in your policy and procedure manual. I know it's how you've been operating because I deal with all kinds of things all over the place. We just have to make sure that our manuals tell people what we're actually doing. Sometimes we do things without writing it down, so get that manual updated. And also make sure that your manual updates include changes to buyer agency representation forms in your state. Prior to these lawsuit settlements, not every state had buyer representation paperwork. I'm lucky that North Carolina and South Carolina, my two states, already had everything baked in. We've been doing this for a long time. If you're a broker in another state, make sure that some part of your manual addresses what happens when state paperwork changes and how you address that in your files to make sure the consumer is getting the most most professional, most legal representation available, and that's coming from your office. Now, if you don't have a policy and procedure manual, I do have mine available to share as a framework. But just understand, when I share mine, it's a framework, not the one that you would absolutely live by, unless you decide to come work in Leigh Thomas Brown's office, in which case you would have mine in specific. Because my market is different than your market, my culture is different than your culture, and frankly, I'm a teeny tiny office. If you are a big giant firm, you probably have a whole different administrative setup. So, think about what you need, what you're providing, and how you can be the best possible example of excellence in real estate. That's what that policies and procedures manual should be driving home. If you have questions or you need me to answer something for you as a broker, hit me up in the comments below or send me a direct message. I'll help any way I can, because frankly, That's how we create a better real estate world. All of us working together.
