A while back I wrote a blog about my own personal experience in searching for property listing in another state in order to do a between the job interview, whirl wind tour of listings with my wife in a town we would be looking at moving to should she land a new job in that state. This is a follow up to that experience, as the owner of a Kansas business and property marketing company I have had to file away mistakes, problems, typo's, and a wide assortment of things I have learned over the years that did not have the desired result or down right made my company look bad to the customers I was seeking to gain or to my exsiting clients, so I could be darn sure it never happened again......Ever!
In my business if you make your client look bad you won't have clients very long, so it has always been very important to me that what ever we put our name on, it has to be the very best or it doesn't get released till it is 100% right, we don't want to make our clients' look bad or our company! Now that I have moved my company across the country and started rebuilding my company to be a Kansas 360 virtual home tours leader, I was approached by a friend to consider starting a new company with him in my new location, in order to do this new venture we would need to find between 40 and 80 acres of flat land in a prime location.
I was asked to search large acres of land in the area for sale, so I hit the internet and started searching for the right location and for the amount of acres we would be needing for this venture. As I soon found out today's acreage agents (some of them) are not up to speed on the use of internet sales and marketing. I had found the perfect parcel of land in a search, the listing info had a very poorly done black and white plot image taken from the space shuttle and it wasn't even oriented north or marked directionally. It had Google generated map with a pin marker placement of the property location. Well as I looked at the Google map, I knew the county roads out that way, it just so happens the property the listing agent had marked was the 40 acres of farm land that is right next door to one of my long time friends farm.
As I studied the map and plot image something just didn't jive right. So I opened up Google earth and took a look, none of the land marks would line up no matter how you moved around on Google earth. I tried to call the agent and ask if the land on his map was the right property I was looking at but no answer, I left a msg and called my buddy up and asked him if knew anything about it, he said no way that land was for sale he has been trying to buy it for 20 years. Well about and hour later my phone rang and it was the listing agent, so I opened up the map he had on the listing and tried to talk it over based on the roads shown on his map. This guy thought I was from mars or something as I described to him what I was looking at and after about a half hour and pointing out other known land marks such as "Lone Star Kansas" located a half mile north.
DING DING DING the light bulb lit up with this guy and he says "oh no my listing is two and a half mile to the north of there" well I was able to find the new location no problem, it was not what my business partner is looking for and I just wasted about two hours trying to research this listing using the wrong info posted by a listing agent. I would have been happy to add a link, but the listing is now gone and for 545.000 I doubt is was sold in this market, maybe? I lean more towards it expired and I wouldn't be surprised if the property owner had very little traffic.
Why would an agent not make sure they done their job right and double checked their online listings to see it's done right, why would an agent put their name on something so wrong? Why do such a disservice to your client? The day's of the old huge MLS book are long gone and they won't be back, so if your not up to speed in today's computer based world, then you should take advantage of the free or cheap classes offered by most B.O.R.'s or C.E. classes for computer. Now I know most of the people I'm talking about are not reading this because they can't even check out their listings, but hey it needed to be said. On the bright side all these poor performers sure do a good job of making those of you who do it right look good.
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