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Sleepy Saturday Mornings with Your Listing Agent

By
Real Estate Technology with Anywhere Real Estate

I work with buyers.  While I usually maintain two or three listings, the brunt of my business comes from buyers.  On any given weekend, I may have three or four different clients scheduled for showings.  I feel blessed to have the business, but there is one persistent problem with this scenario... listing agents.

I call Saturdays, "Sleepy Saturdays" because trying to get a listing agent to answer the phone before 10am on a Saturday is impossible, and trying to get them to call you back before noon is extremely rare. 

Seriously! I haven't slept that late since I was in college.  What are these guys doing?

On a typical Saturday I'll have my afternoon appointment call and ask to add a couple of more homes to the list.  I'll call the listing agents and, of coarse, get voice mail. This past weekend, I called one that indicated on the listing they needed 2 hours of notice.  I left the message at 9am to schedule the showing at 3pm.  The listing agent called me back at 1:30pm to tell me I couldn't show the property until after 5:00pm.  We wrote a contract on another home in that neighborhood.

My point is this.  If you have listings, get out of the bed on Saturday and answer your phone.  Agents who don't answer their phones deserve to go broke too, but that's another post.

Thanks for the chance to vent.  This is therapeutic!

Comments(4)

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Doug Rogers
RE/MAX Coastal Properties - Destin, FL
Your Real Estate Resource!

Unless you are REALLY hungover, how hard is it to answer a phone and set an appointment? I think people just stop caring after a while.

Apr 08, 2010 08:49 AM
Dee Mayers
Covina, CA
San Gabriel Valley, CA

The same things is happening here too.  Some agents are now asking you to text them for information on their listings.  My question is, why not include relevant information like key codes if you don't want me to call you.   I also called an agent with instructions to call  2 hours before showing, and she never called me back.  I think we all need to be retrained in a course of ethics or courtesy.

Apr 08, 2010 10:20 AM
Carla Muss-Jacobs, RETIRED
RETIRED / State License is Inactive - Portland, OR

It is an annoying part of our job, but it's just one of those things.  I have a laundry list of annoyances, but in the end, when the deal is done . . . who cares?  All businesses and job have 'those' people that are constant annoyances.  I'm just grateful I don't have to work with them day in day out.

Apr 10, 2010 05:57 PM
Ray Garrett, Jr.
Anywhere Real Estate - Raleigh, NC
Director of Productivity and Innovation

Sometimes I get the, "I was with clients excuse," but please! If I call at 9:00AM and the listing agent doesn't call me back until 3PM, they can't tell me they couldn't have taken a few minutes to arrange a showing on THEIR listing.

Apr 15, 2010 12:49 AM