Real Estate and Horse Country Life at Lake Anna

I pride myself on giving my clients and customers outstanding service. A lot of other real estate agents at Lake Anna and the surrounding areas do, too. Sometimes, I just need to vent. In my mind- here are seven deadly realtor sins:

1. Thank you for showing my listing. Now why won’t you respond to requests for feedback? How else can I convince my clients to paint that front door, mow the lawn or lower the price? I ALWAYS  respond to requests for feedback and try to put a positive spin on it in a format that can be passed on to your clients.
2. Agents who price listings too high to begin with in order to get the listing so that it gets stale on the market I know it’s a hard balance and sometimes the clients just can’t price it where it should be (or won’t) but know your market (as crazy as it is) and PULL COMPS!  But that’s OK, overprice it and I’ll get it later at a lower price when your listing expires.
3. Agents who ignore the showing instructions on the listing,  or just don’t bother to check them and end up looking foolish in front of their clients, and mine.
4. Out-of-area  agents who expect you to show their clients property since they live in No Va or Richmond, don’t have the same lockboxes, yada-yada and then want to represent their client in the sale (and collect their commission). They also do their clients an injustice by not knowing the area and the neighborhoods. I recently found a piece of land for a buyer listed by an out-of-area agent. When I called the agent, they had no plat, no soil work and no idea if there were covenants or restrictions. He actually asked me if there is city water (there wasn’t)! I went to the courthouse and pulled the information but that is a service that I feel the listing agent should provide for their clients if they are going to take a listing. There’s much more to taking a listing than putting it in the MLS and putting up a sign.
5. Empty brochure boxes or no brochures, especially on houses. This is not to say mine haven’t been empty a time or two- but not for weeks on end! If you really don’t want my client to remember your property then don’t bother with a brochure at all.
6. Agents who don ‘t leave cards. See #1 above- it’s common courtesy, especially if it’s a combination lockbox that we can’t trace.
7. And the worst one of all- agents who talk poorly about other agents to get the listing. Not only is this against the Realtor Code of Ethics, it’s just not professional.

Now, I’m not saying that most real estate agents are guilty of these sins because they are not. It has been my pleasure to work with a majority of professional, courteous and competent agents over the years and I do believe that the ones who are will still be here when the others have changed professions (again). As a potential client, you have a right to expect a high level of service from your agent. If you don’t get it, come see me.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 9th, 2010 at 12:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.