It has been my experience that many relo agents work too fast with quantity in mind rather than quality. The idea seems to be they're only in town a short time, so let's show them as many houses as we can before they leave.
I got a call from an agent a couple of days ago. He was inquiring about an equestrian listing I have for a relo client. The price of the piece is $490,000, but it's one of five parcels totalling $1.3MM. It has no home, but has a large equestrian barn with living quarters for a caretaker. Very nice listing, but I was curious why they weren't looking for a home. He told me they were being put up by the employer? I asked if that was permanent, which was the nicest way to say "that can't go on forever dummy", and he said they would continue looking for a home once the horses were handled. (Silly me would probably just sell the horses, move, and get new horses, but that's just me.) I happened to mention that the house with the barn was across the street, and was also at $490,000. We also discussed the size of the home. He indicated they would probably like to look at both.
When I went over to show the place, the buyers were very nice, but immediately said the house was way too large for them. They also said they needed to focus on a home first and a barn second, and that their total budget was $500,000. Of course the agent expressed surprise that there was no house with the barn, and told them he thought I said $490,000 for both tracts. In addition, he had no idea how many horses they had so he could find adequate quarters for them. End result is my client paid to have the place spotless, and we both wasted hours in preparation, when they didn't even bother to look at the barn.
But the topper to me was, this was a corporate relocation, and he had no idea who the client's employer was, or where they were located in relation to the property! Greater Atlanta can have major traffic problems in commute.
In computers, the old saying is garbage in, garbage out. The same rule applies to real estate!
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