Looking for a house myself has certainly been a sobering experience. It’s also been very valuable. Historically buying and selling in San Francisco has admittedly placed me in a bit of a bubble. There are good and bad real estate agents everywhere, but overall, San Francisco has a pretty good bunch of people.
Looking outside the city has opened my eyes to some situations that have been both troubling and annoying. I won’t name names or addresses; here are a few of the things that have happened to me so far in the six offers I have written:
Not returning phone calls/emails-at all. That despite email, text and voicemail messages. I’ll bet the listing agent represented both buyer and seller. (See below).
Slow response (to be fair, the property in question was bank owned-I can tell lots more stories about that, later)
After the agent responded to me after several calls and emails, I was told to bring my ‘highest and best’ offer. I guess that should have been pretty self-explanatory, but I can equate it to being told to do something without any direction, like ‘did you know you were supposed to turn back there?’
Once the offer was in hand, tough to find the seller and/or get the offer to them. We call this ‘shopping’ your offer.
‘I may have a counter offer for you tomorrow’. That happened for three days. The movement occurred once I told them I was no longer interested.
Listing agent writing an offer on the property when there are multiple offers. But wait, it gets better. The agent told me they were writing an offer AFTER they received my offer and looked at it. I guess it shouldn’t be a shock that the listing agent also represented the successful buyer.
Agents outside the city seem to represent the buyer as well as the seller a lot more frequently than I see that in San Francisco. I have NEVER written an offer for a buyer where I represent the seller and there is competition. Bad form. Shockingly, it is legal, but I don’t think it should be allowed.
Saying offers were being reviewed as received, then changing their mind after the fact. I wrote an offer on the first day a property was on the market-so did three other people. Then the agent said, no, the seller wanted to think about them for a week. In that week, there were six more buyers. I didn’t get it. Wonder if the listing agent got that one too?……
Then, there was one offer I wrote where the agent was great and I just got beat-bad!
If I have anymore experiences, I will update this! Bottom line is it isn’t surprising how people get a negative impression of Real Estate Agents and it’s sure hard to get people to trust that you won’t pull the same crap to them after they have been stung. I can assure you and give you references, I don’t pull this crap.