Shit Real Estate Agents Say To Get You To Hire Them
(A Sweary Real Estate Post by Allison Parks)
Note: This is the first post in a series.
Getting ready to buy or sell a home? Need a real estate agent? Do you have a nagging feeling that some of these agents you are interviewing are full of shit? They probably are. A lot of real estate agents suck, which is a problem, because buying or selling a home is a huge transaction with serious financial consequences.
If you wind up with a crappy real estate agent as a home-seller, you may not get top dollar for your home. As a home-buyer, you may not get the repairs that your new home requires, because your agent doesn’t know how to negotiate well. Problem Agents can cost you time, money, and stress, which could have been avoided. As an agent who has seen my fair share of Problem Agents, this is my No-Holds-Barred Guide to identify the weeds.
First, let’s discuss why many real estate agents suck…
Some real estate agents suck because they are only capable of caring about their own interests without the ability to simultaneously care about their clients.
That’s pretty sucky. Real estate is supposed to be a service industry. It is OK to make a shitload of money, so long as you are providing great service to your clients, but this truth bomb that would seemingly be common sense hasn’t quite made it into the the hearts and minds of many real estate agents.
Other real estate agents suck because, honestly, it’s pretty easy to get a real estate license. You don’t have to be particularly smart to get a real estate license and you can still make money at real estate even if you don’t know much about it. Many real estate agents are terrible at doing their job, but are fantastic at getting clients, so they are still financially successful.
In the state of Colorado, getting a real estate license requires 120 hours of school and passing a test that you can take an unlimited amount of tries, with a passing grade of 80% on the national portion and only 75% on the state portion. It’s really not that tough to get the license. I assure you, when I passed the real estate exam with scores well into the 90s on my first try, I STILL DIDN’T KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT HOW TO DO REAL ESTATE. Not to mention, once you have your real estate license, you only must acquire 24 hours of continuing education every three years to keep your license active in the state of Colorado. That’s not much, so unless someone really takes the initiative to learn how to do real estate, which is an endeavor that requires a lot more time, money, and active brain cells, you might have a real estate agent who doesn’t know much about, well, real estate.
With all of this being said, how is the average consumer to discern which real estate agents are Fantastic Agents and which ones are Slimy Salespeople? Slimy Salespeople give passionate and savvy sales pitches to land their clients. They tend to all say the same shit, because they memorized scripts that they were given early in the business. Because their humanity died a long time ago, they don’t actually have anything of value to say. I have heard the same thing from people burned by Slimy Salespeople time and time again. “They worked so hard to get my business, but once they had my business, it felt like they didn’t care any more.” This is the trademark of the Problem Agent.
In the famous words of the Wu Tang Clan, protect ya neck.
Don’t let fancy sales pitches sway you, no matter how convincing they may be. If you have a gut feeling, follow it.
When a real estate agent seems like they might be an asshole, they probably are. This industry has more assholes than a hot dog factory…
You may have gathered that I have no love lost for a lot of the “professionals” in my industry. That part is true. You may think that I’m jaded or even an angry person. That part isn’t true. Fact is, I lost a wrestling match with my marketing team and they are making me create content using my “authentic personality.” Turns out, my authentic personality is very sweary.
Through the years, I have grown weary of seeing home-buyers and sellers get taken advantage of by Problem Agents whose lack of integrity and skill negatively affect the outcomes of their clients. It is incredibly frustrating to work in an industry that isn’t well-respected because so many agents have exhibited behaviors that reflect poorly on the rest of us. I would like to see the business go to Fantastic Agents who give a shit.
Want a Fantastic Agent instead of a Problem Agent? Give us a call at 303-908-9873.
For more on Shit Real Estate Agents Say to Get You to Hire Them, read our next post, I Sold Soooo Many Homes Last Year; I Must Be Good.
