We occasionally receive some … interesting … press releases and pitches here in The Commercial Record’s newsroom. Last week’s included an email from the “just inaugurated federal government of Nigeria” requesting The Warren Group “come forward with [its] outstanding debt details,” the resolution of which requiring a number of personal data points (subject line: REPLY ME). Deleted. Well, first shared on social media, then deleted. Poor Nigeria.

Also in the editorial inbox, spam from (purportedly) Amazon, BJ’s, CVS, Cigna, Samsung, Southwest and Walgreens – all in less than 24 hours. Deleted. Pretty typical, really.
Because we’re a newsroom, we also get pitches that don’t fit our business model – mostly consumer-oriented products or services. (Although we also received an astonishingly detailed description of the process for and necessity of building a chicken coop – not a proposition that’s likely to go over well on the roof of an office building.) PR reps fish a wide sea, bless them, and you never know when you’ll get an unexpected nibble.

In that vein, an email pitch came through last month entitled “The Dangerous Reality of Real Estate, Ask Expert Real Estate Veteran [Name Redacted].”

Ok, Name Redacted, you got us. The Commercial Record covers the real estate industry; we’re interested in protecting agents and buyers in a dangerous world. Redacted, it turns out, espouses an interesting method of protection: forgoing an agent and listing your own home.

Forgive The Commercial Record’s staff, but we fail to see how this is safer – on a number of levels – than enlisting the assistance of a professional. DIY is all well and good, until you flood the bathroom or burn down the house.

Consumers, particularly the increasingly important Millennial buyers, are already leery of the home buying process and all of its component pieces – the banks, lawyers and real estate agents so inherent in the system. Millennials aren’t generally big on “the system” to begin with, and having recently witnessed a housing market crash and perceived lack of repercussions for those responsible, are even less likely to put their trust in The Man (and his subsidiaries).

This comes as no surprise to The Commercial Record’s readers, who have no doubt felt the pressure of convincing the youngest generation that their services are not only needed, but valuable. Purchasing a property is one of the largest financial decisions to be made in a lifetime and it should be apparent that there are some things even the Internet cannot do, but clearly the argument continues to be made.

Alas, it’s also true that safety is a concern for brokers, agents and homebuyers, and a call from a so-called expert to remove some of the alleged safety concerns (oh, and also the commission) from the process may cause some consumers to sit up and take notice.

But not, we think, as many as Name Redacted hopes or expects. By their very nature, sellers were once buyers. They have experienced the process at least once and, if their team at that time was competent, sellers should know that professional assistance can make or break a deal. From the other side, even first-time buyers with a modicum of awareness knows that the home buying process today is far more complicated than it has ever been and that to go it alone is at best unwise and at worst foolish.

So good luck to you, Name Redacted; some other magazine may bite on your hook, but not The Commercial Record, where we believe in the necessity of all components of the residential real estate industry – and that removing one piece of the puzzle will not make any of them safer.