WatchWould you be willing to provide advice to buyers on an hourly basis without steering them into signing papers with you, and without referring them to any other salesman, agent, or broker?
If you're willing to do that and to keep your clients' information completely confidential, please send your hourly rate and DRE license number to p@patrick.net. If you are not in California, please say what state you are in.
I would like to refer buyers with questions to you for objective advice, or for advice biased slightly against buying. Your identity would be masked by your Patrick.net username until a client paid a deposit to contact you and you agreed to accept the client after hearing who they are.
Some questions and answers from an agent who is interested:
Is it a phone call? I once used an attorney who billed in 15 min increments.
Yes, unless the agent wants to physically meet up with the client.
How does the payment work?
Client pays Patrick.net, Patrick.net mails a check to the agent's address as listed with the DRE, minus 10% commission. So the agent is guaranteed to get paid, and the client is guaranteed that the payment will go to a real agent. After that, the relationship can continue without Patrick.net being involved if the client and agent want that, though of course I hope they will continue to use Patrick.net.
What if the client asks a question that the agent cannot answer? Client gets a discount or money back?
No refunds, but the client's risk is limited to the one payment for that hour of advice.
For the hourly rate, I would say $100/hour although I am not really interested in driving somewhere. I would probably limit this to phone calls.
Your choice. You should just say in your Patrick.net profile that you just do phone calls.
I think that rate is about right, though if you get a really good reputation from reviews on the website, then you could charge more.
Not sure if you can really attract agents with this
If clients are willing to spend enough and see that it's worth it to get truly unbiased advice, it will work. But I'm not sure clients are willing.
One idea would be to figure out what kind of experience the agents have. For example, short sales, construction, lending, etc. This would help you with the matching up. I don't think that matching up by zip code is perfect, it is a starting point at best.
Yes, I'm hoping that the agent will summarize their expertise in their Patrick.net profile, and that the client will review the agent on the site after the call, but keeping the agent's identity limited to their Patrick.net username.