I was asked by a friend to find a reliable Real Estate Agent to list their home for sale in another state. Usually that's not a problem. I search for Agents with blogs showing a little bit of personality with a large degree of professionalism, and knowledge. What I found shocked me.
It may be due to a different market, but I sent out 4 requests, asking them to contact me about a listing in the area. Not 1 agent responded. So I made a few calls. 2 answered their phones, the other 2 didn't return the message I felt on their phone. Were they too busy to get a listing?
Then surprises began to unfold. Commissions were between 8-10% and they wanted long term contracts between 6-12 months. Well, I thought those rates were a little high for agents who I had to chase down for a referral.
The only thing I got out of that referral was a few good laughs when I looked at listings some of those agents put on the Internet. Of course I called Agents with great pictures, but some of them I didn't call – well it was obvious why I passed on them. It appeared a number of agents used cell phones to take pictures of homes for sale, posting many out of focus. Some had 1-2 pictures for listings.
Then I looked at descriptions. Some copied and pasted descriptions. One size fits all. Then of course I skipped over agents with no picture on their profiles. Come on now, a little common sense here. But I found out, some websites charge for an upgraded profile. I looked at my profile on some of those sites. It had a picture and the site told me it was 100% complete. But, my picture, sales, and client referrals didn't show up on the site. But an ad to buy an upgrade on the site was there.
Come on now, what are some of those sites trying to do? In the past they used to call businesses doing that racketeering. Today they call it advertising. Do those sites really have the right to decide which agents people should or should not work with? Is a professional Real Estate Agent rated by the amount of money they shell out to Internet companies with no regard to the quality of service they provide? Maybe we have to demand a little quality control from the MLS services we are paying for.
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