These thoughts regarding frustration related to dealing with realtors during a recent move wraps up a series of posts, including commentary on the depiction of Boston on television, that touch on that relocation. The underlying factor is that the de minimis requirements for obtaining a license to sell real estate place everyone who buys and/or sells a residence in harm's way. The combination of not requiring any formal education, facilitating an extremely flexible schedule, and having potential for a large income can be figuratively deadly.
Said "professional" (intense coughing) always being motivated to both cater to potential buyers even if representing the seller and further acting in self-interest in the manner of benefiting more from getting a lower price for a home early in the process than devoting a few more months to the transaction and getting a slightly higher price that minimally increases his or her commission. A personal hit was getting a minimum of $20,000 below the fair-market value of my well-maintained home in a good neighborhood of a mid-level resort community largely to get my personal "monkey" off my back.
The funny because its true thing is that most lawyer jokes apply just as strongly to realtors. The good news regarding both members of either group is that they can swim in the ocean without fearing a shark attack.
The solution to all this is a course of action that a friend recommended early in the process and that I ended up doing. One must be resigned to figuring out the minimum that he or she can accept for a home and selling said abode for that amount.
Anyone who has undergone this Hell can easily picture a (as of yet undeveloped and randomly named) SNL character William the Monkey Realtor played by an actual blazer-clad simian whose vocalizations are subtitled. Picturing such a character responding to simple questions with a blank stare is very easy. The intelligence level of this character and his actually returning calls and emails may make folks currently trying to buy and/or sell a home want to hire him.
One can only hope for a William movie in which he teams up with an uber-arrogant billionaire orangutan real-estate developer (any resemblance to any current presidential candidate is purely coincidental) for the deal of the century. It is difficult to imagine this being any worse that 95-percent of the films based on SNL characters, A must-mention aside regarding this is Jon Stewart commenting on "The Daily Show" years ago that television characters do not make successful movie characters because they are not good enough to warrant such a project.
The "professional" who inspires the thought of adding a barely fictionalized colleague of his to the roster of SNL characters came highly recommended by several good friends. However, he committed such faux pas as not updating online listings after price reductions (and subsequently stating that said listings are not mandatory) or even updating his own site after my sale went through, immediately scaring off potential buyers with reports of "a potential lawsuit" affecting my home when no such threat existed, repeatedly referring to very basic applicable principles of law as "legal mumbo jumbo" that he could not comprehend, and saying "I can't remember all that" when asked to provide potential buyers three sentences of information regarding an issue.
An actual conversation consisted of this real-life William saying "so, I spoke to those guys." "Which guys?" "The buyers." "Which buyers?" "I don't remember." This led to my listing each of the few buyers who expressed interest in my home until the realtor remembered to whom he spoke.
A confession is that the above telephone discussion and most other conversations via that device with this idiot involved my alternatively making a highly predictable hand gesture and literally pressing tongue very firmly against cheek to express a related sentiment. This is from a generally well-mannered darling of educators and old ladies everywhere.
Asking "do you drink" while handing over a gin-and-tonic set (which also blatantly promoted his agency) as a thank you gift was a perfect final encounter with the realtor. Said bottle inevitably collecting dust on a shelf for the next several decades (I am never moving again after this Hell) will be an apt tribute to the real-life counterpart of William,
The icing on this very bitter cake related to the manager of the agency that employed my realtor. This manager disregarded every report of a violation of state law, including another realtor knowingly falsely listing the house next to mine under a virtually identical address as mine to make that older listing look more recent. A notable conversation caught the manager on a four-hour drive from our shared community to Montreal and having her state that she could not speak because she was out of the country.
For the sake of proving that this pair are not an isolated incident, the realtors with whom I worked in buying my current home were no better. My first realtor literally stood by mute while the realtor for the sellers forcibly presented modifications that were highly disadvantageous to me every two days both before and after signing a purchase-and-sale agreement.
The deal-breaker was the seller's agent cornering me at the post-purchase-and-sale home inspection to sign a paper that granted the sellers an open-ended right to condition the sale on their finding a place to buy. This document further provided for the closing to occur two weeks following the to-be-determined closing on that as of yet unidentified property. My alleged advocate merely stood by and watched this occur.
The seller's agent further asserted that I beat out two other buyers for that desirable property that produced a 227-page home-inspection report that noted things that included a very dangerous spaghetti-wire electrical system and cement sealing a leak near the chimney. That money pit remained on the market four months later.
The contribution of the realtor for my new home was essentially demanding a week before the closing that it occur at an earlier date that I had originally requested but was previously told was impossible. This changed on my realtor realizing that he had a closing scheduled for the date and time to which I agreed.
My hanging up on the realtor prompted him to call my partner, who was not a party to the transaction, and getting him to agree to the earlier date. The realtor did so immediately on my hanging up on him.
The bottom lines (pun intended) regarding all this are that William sketches would write themselves and that I would love to see any of the "professionals" with whom I dealt sit so that I could see whether they tried to put their elbow on the seat.
Anyone with questions or comments (realtors are welcome to get help from an adult) regarding these thoughts is welcome to email me. You can also connect on Twitter via @tvdvdguy.
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