WHERE DO THESE AGENTS COME FROM???

It never ceases to amaze me as to how lazy and incompetentent most agents are. I showed a house for lease for $3,500 a month the prospective tenants were interested, and ask me to see if the seller/landlord would take $3,000. Now I have been around a long time and I know full well that verbal offers are not binding. None the less i called the listing agent and asked if she would call the seller and ask if they would be interested in leasing for $3,000 a month and all the other terms the seller wanted were fine with the prospective renter, so the only thing to negotiate is the monthly dollar. I asked if she would like me to put it in writing or if we could go verbal till we had a "meeting of the minds". Her response was the seller won't take that!! I asked if they had any prior offers that she could base her decision on? no. Well, will you call the seller and let them know you have an offer, I ask. She says I don't have to call them I just listed the property and I think they can get more. Do I have to put it in writing for you. Well she says, I'll call and advise him not to take the offer. I suggested she tell the seller what the offer was and let the seller determine if they should reject. Would any of you be suprised that the seller did not even counter. The prospective tenants moved on. Anybody think the listing agent swayed the seller. Had the seller countered even by $400 the renters would have accepted.  but when the seller was not even willing to budge a little the renters felt the seller would be very difficult to deal with in the future. One other thing to consider is the utilities the seller is paying. They left copies of the bills out for people to see and with gas, water, electric, association dues, the total was a little over 400 a month.

Even if you leave the utilites out of the eqaution. the seller would have been taking $6,000 hit for the year and with market time for rents in the area is 4 months. You can bet I will be watching for when the listing expires.