As an academic and consultant, Mike DelPrete wears many hats. He can now add “sting operative” to his resume.
DelPrete managed a team of undercover “secret home shoppers” to test the responsiveness of brokerages to online inquiries on home listings. His team conducted 100 such tests and found significant lapses in how brokerages handled contact with potential buyers.
The average time for a response to online contact was 8 hours and 17 minutes, but the median time was 39 minutes. However, he found that 47% of inquiries didn’t even receive a response, as brokerages left on the table many opportunities to cultivate a new lead.
To standardize the test sample, DelPrete initiated inquiries in markets all over the country. The homes asked about were median priced, and the contact was made to individual brokerage websites, meaning not Zillow. The inquiries were made during business hours on weekdays.
More than 25 different brokerages were contacted, including giants such as Redfin, RE/MAX, Berkshire Hathaway, eXp, Douglas Elliman, and Compass. Each one was queried two or three times.
DelPrete didn’t find any pattern in responses, saying “it was a roll of the dice each time.” According to DelPrete, it illustrates real estate’s last mile problem, where brokerages can invest in systems and technology to help the process, but still need effective agents to close the deal.
The experiment also included trips to open houses, but brokerages didn’t fare much better there either. About 42% of attendees did not get asked for their contact information. While 58% of agents did ask for contact information, a third of those people did not receive a follow up. In all, 62% of in-person and open-home shoppers did not receive a followup after a home tour.
