Chatham County Real Estate Agent Eric Andrews discusses the benefits of using an agent who has a brick-and-mortar location and is active in your community.
Speaker 1: Why should you want to use a brick-and-mortar real estate company?
Speaker 2: You might not want to. It’s a personal choice. There are a lot of people that are saving money and they don’t have the traditional offices anymore. I think in these times, it’s more important than ever, to have some link to traditional. First of all, when you deal with a brick-and-mortar real estate company that actually has a physical presence, has actual space in your community, they’re investing in your community. This is where they buy lunches. This is where they’re involved in the downtown festival. We’re a part of it. It’s not like we’re doing this out of our basement or on our bed with a laptop.
This is a real office. This is a place where you can meet clients, especially when we’re dealing with some higher dollar land opportunities or commercial opportunities. We have a conference room and it’s real. It not how everybody’s going. There are other companies that are more virtual and everybody’s driving around and they don’t get together as much. But I think that we’re different. I think it’s important for us to have a presence. I think you see that. We advertise for a lot of local events and we’re sponsors of some charitable organizations. It also kind of shows that we’re not going anywhere. If you’re an agent that works from your home or out of the trunk of your car, you might just say, “Forget it. I’m moving back to Utah or California or whatever.” And you don’t have any roots here. But when you actually have a physical space, I think that’s proofs that we’re not going anywhere.
I think having an office is a higher level of professionalism. A few years ago there was a bunch of paralegals and attorneys that were doing real estate closings out of their trunk of their car. And literally, they were pulling up in a parking lot in Walmart and people were signing documents in the trunk of your car. That’s how I think…when you deal with a non brick-and-mortar firm, I think that’s what you’re dealing with. You’re doing a closing out the trunk of your car. This is a real company with real roots to the community and we’re going to be here for a long time.
