Real Estate Investing

When I bought my first house, we had a wonderful agent.   It seems like she worked with us for a year or two before we actually found our home. When we first started our search, we quickly learned we just couldn’t come up with the down payment and closing costs.  This was the time before there were down payment assistance programs offered by FHA, so although our credit was strong we had to put everything on hold because we were cash poor. 

Every Sunday I’d watch the real estate shows and dream.  The Realtors who had a lot of houses featured almost had superstar agent status in my mind and I knew I’d never contact them.  When we finally saved enough money, I called the agent we’d worked with before because I felt safe and comfortable with her.  And she guided us through the whole process from finding our home, negotiating the contract, inspection, and finally closing.

We thought highly enough of her that when we were ready to sell 12 years later, she was the first person we called.  The listing started well, but once we had it on the market our agent had surgery and another agent was assigned to us.  This is when we experienced the “extreme dislike” side of the love:hate relationship people have with Realtors.  We survived her helper, though and eventually sold our house, then bought another home in another state.  Again there was a love:hate relationship - we couldn’t stand our new agent but loved the broker who listed the house we purchased.

The moral of this story is that just like everyone is different, every AGENT is different.  While Realtors are held to very high ethical standards, some agents manage to find ways around them and when they do it gives all of us a black eye.  That said, I believe it’s wrong to judge all agents because of these bad apples.  So I posed the question to Google:  Why do people hate realtors?

The Bloodhoundblog had asked the same question and had some very interesting replies. 

Commenter Rob was particularly nasty in his reply, “What we see is people with an arrogant attitude driving expensive cars, acting like everyone owes you something when you DON’T work that hard at all.”  He went on to add, “Realtors are vultures, and protagonists of a consumerist society” capping it off with name calling.

It’s obvious he had a very negative experience, but I wonder if sometimes people just have bad dispositions and will never be happy.  I once listed the house of another client.  He got an offer - a low one - contingent upon the buyer’s first home selling.  I didn’t feel the seller should have accepted the offer that low, but he jumped at it.  At least he took my advice to add the 48-hour first right of refusal option in the counter.  Two weeks later, a full price offer came in with no contingencies.  The first buyer’s home hadn’t sold and they weren’t willing to remove that contingency, so my seller was able to accept the second offer.  He made $10,000 more on the house… far more than the commission he paid my firm to sell it.  I made him an extra $10,000 yet he complained the entire time to me.  But he also threw things at his wife and constantly yelled at the children so my goal (along with providing good service) was to survive his general nastiness.  I vowed to never work with him again.

As a result, I agree with another commenter at the Bloodhoundblog: “Time wounds all heels, but you can accelerate the process: Don’t do business with jerks.”

We are - technically - sales people.  Unless I am working with a rude client, I often forget this because I consider the job of finding someone a home to be so much more than that.  When you are helping someone buy or sell a home, your work can have either a huge positive or negative impact in their lives.  After I’ve closed a transaction, I want to be remembered in a good way.  I’d hope all agents would reach for that goal and look beyond the “just another paycheck” mentality.