The Truth About Floor Time

by Phil Hoover, Real Estate Broker

Back in the 1970’s, when real estate offices were usually co-located adjacent to the nearest grocery store in a shopping center, there was a phenomenon known as “drop in” traffic.

People would go to the shopping center to buy groceries, walk by a real estate office, gaze at the photos in the windows, and occasionally “drop in” to inquire about a home they had seen.

Predictably, those people were “just looking” and not likely to actually buy or sell anything.

The duty agent, aka “floor agent”, was there in the hopes that a real buyer or seller would show up, but floor agents were usually about as lonely as the Maytag repairman.

My best guess is that the last time anyone walked into a real estate office to inquire about a photo of a home taped to a window was probably around the time dinosaurs disappeared from the earth.

The exception to this is perhaps resort areas like McCall or Sun Valley, but the truth is that floor time is mostly unproductive for most Boise real estate agents.

For that reason, most offices no longer have floor time and instead route inquiries to the listing agent.

Or, they assign floor duty to the office rookies who have not yet realized that there are better uses of their time.

Fact is, experienced, successful agents will not take floor time!