I wonder how some real estate agents ever get or keep clients - seriously, if you have an "I know it all" attitude and treat inquiries like they're *bothering* you - then why the heck are you in this business?
Here's the scenario: My mother-in-law retired earlier this year. She wants to relocate from Nevada to Texas to be here with the grandkids. I want her here desperately - I absolutely adore my mother-in-law and can you say babysitter?
She's been fixing her house up this year to sell and she's ready to put it on the market. So it's time to start looking for houses here. To help out, I've been scouting out homes in the immediate area on her behalf and sending her links to view houses online. We have certain criteria that she must be close enough for the kids to walk to or ride their bike to without having to cross any major streets, so we're talking a 5 block radius.
A house came up for sale down the street several weeks ago. This house is ideal -did I mention the babysitter would be just down the street? - but to date there's still not any flyers nor are there any pictures online. After waiting a few weeks, I decided to call the agent to get some additional information.
THIS AGENT WAS RUDE! Rude, rude, rude...
I guess my first mistake was saying "hi I'm calling about this house that's for sale down the street." So I got the nosy-neighbor sarcastic response of "so you're planning to move down the block?" NO.
I told him that I was wanting information for my mother-in-law. His response was "so have your mother-in-law call me." At this point I'm ready to throttle this idiot.
So I went on to explain that my mother-in-law lives in Vegas and wants to move here. His next response was "is her house on the market yet?" No, no it's not. The next snotty response was that the owners wouldn't accept any contingencies and if we wanted to see the house we'd need to bring a pre-approval letter from a mortgage company.
That's not a problem because in this particular case her house in Vegas is paid in full AND she has the money in the bank to buy a $200k house outright so there's no reason for a loan. Additionally, my brother-in-law and his *partner* live in Vegas and can manage the upkeep, etc. for her if she chose to move here today...but again, this is not his concern nor is it a problem nor is it why I called him!
Basically the conversation went on and on - all I was looking for was a flyer and maybe some snapshots of the interior to send her for consideration. I wasnt' looking for an attitude, nor was I looking to be talked down to. I basically could of sold this house for this agent and instead, I was treated like a nosy-neighbor who was wasting this agents time.
Luckily there's about 5 other houses in the area for sale, Grandma Las Vegas will be here in a week to look at them and she'll hopefully be moved here by Thanksgiving. So, Mr. Snotty real estate agent, you just kissed that sale goodbye!
Lesson here? Take 5 minutes to listen to what the person on the other end of the phone has to say. I'm sure had he gotten the whole story beforehand he wouldn't of had as much of an attitude as he did. I can't help but giggle a little because the way I figure it, he lost an additional $6,000 in commissions because my M-I-L doesn't have a buyers agent here in Texas!
Way to go jerk!
I know not all agents act like this, this is just one bad banana in the bunch - I have a lot of agents that bend over backwards for their clients. Those are the agents I adore and the only kind of agent I'll ever work for!
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