Friday, January 11, 2008

real estate agents. what a racket!



Ok, sorry if I offend any of you fine... smiley... shiny real estate folks out there, but I've got to point out that you guys... well... you suck. I really don't understand what an agent can do for you besides open locked doors and follow you around making you feel uncomfortable. I shouldn't be so quick to judge I suppose, I've only bought one house and I couldn't afford much. But looking back on the miserable experience of buying my house I think I'd do things a little different.

The first thing I'd do different ...
is NOT HIRE AN AGENT. We let go the first agent we had because she didn't seem to know anything about what she was talking about. Then we hired another one that seemed really knowledgable and qualified. Well at least he told us how knowledgable he was, and how he was a super duper agent from the planet krypton and that he was the highest raking agent in the solar system, or something like that. He also had a big red "S" on his shirt which stood for "super" and he had a really bright white smile. I thought we hit the agent jackpot. But alas, what a terrible mess. After dragging our two kids to look at about 3000 houses that weren't even close to what we were looking for, we finally found one that was acceptable. Or maybe we just got tired of looking at houses and we would've bid on anything that didn't have walls falling down or standing next to a toxic waste dump. That was his method, to break us down into submission.

Looking back on the experience..
Our agent did not look out for our interests at all during the closing. I'm pretty sure the only thing he was concerned about was making a quick sale. I foolishly agreed with him on a few points that he minimized that turned out to be a big ordeal. I won't ramble too much about it, but in the end we bought a house that the sellers didn't want to vacate in any hurry. My agent convinced me to agree to let them move out after the close since they needed the down payment for their new house. We were told a bunch of lies, then we had to argue with the sellers to get them to leave. then when they finally left a few days later, they left us with a mountain of garbage that we had to get rid of and a lot of damage that we hadn't seen on the walkthru (since all their crap was still in here). I'm still trying to get rid of all the junk. Thanks a lot agents. You've done a fine job. And how much commission did you get? You get paid either way don't ya, and it sure is conveniently difficult to reach you since the close. bad agent! bad!

I'd sue, but I'm just not the suing type. Life goes on. Live and learn. Se le vie. ladi dadi, we likes to party. bawitdaba, da-bangy bang and all that jive.

Wait a minute, what was I talking about?
Oh yea, click the picture to see more great real estate cartoons by Eli Stein.

Peace!

3 comments:

  1. Ron,
    As someone who also recently purchased a home, you have my condolences. My real estate agent was reasonable, but the "professional home inspectors" we paid for were useless. I found more things wrong on the walkthrough than they did. And they failed to spot any number of things wrong that are giving us trouble now.

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  2. luckily I have a couple close relatives that are contractors so we had them inspect it. So far we've been pretty lucky, just some minor plumbing problems.

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  3. I've known good ones and bad ones. The last one I had was very good, but didn't know the area well, so my house took longer than necessary to sell. Luckily, I didn't miss the sales boom, we caught it right at the end.

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