Huh?

Hi Vicki,
Your writing always puts a smile on my face, and this was no exception. I was contacted last week by a 19 year old wanna be real estate mogul and the conversation was identical to your third scenario.

I amazed that foreclosure classes haven’t come under the scrutiny of DOJ, or even more scary, the Bloodhound.

Excellent stuff!

Thanks Kevin. It’s nice to know I’m entertaining more than myself and Lani. 🙂

Love ya, Lani.

Yeah I’ve had these calls too. They can get really hissy if you don’t suddenly drop everything and run them through the house exactly when they want to see it.

Aparrently asking if the home is in their price range is taboo… :-/

My favorite line: “The seller requires that I only show this property to pre-qualified buyers.”
To paraphrase Russell Shaw: play golf or show to unqualified buyers- They both pay the same.

Sounds like sour grapes from someone who is experiencing disintermediation. Deal with it. Adapt. Quit whining.

Hi Vicki!

You don’t know me, but I’d like you to come alone to a vacant house simply because I’m calling you up and asking you to!

I have a lot of money, and really am very interested in the house!

Please wear a mini-skirt!

Yours,

Americas Most Wanted #24

>>I always wear mini-skirts, low-cut blouses and lots of perfume.

/ears perk

Hey Athol – You think this is a coincidence?

hi I’M interested in viewing this property. how about saturday afternoon on 11/3/07 at 2:30pm thanks

Speaking as a ‘free agent’ buyer myself (now there’s a shock, eh?) it seems to me that your assertion that we all need to be educated is a very broad generalization. My manners and consideration for other people’s time is not at all tied to my decision to manage my own home search.

You mentioned that you are doing your part to help free agent buyers become successful in their search, but I didn’t see a specific example.

R, Jon

The State stepped in a few years back and wrote Buyer Agency Law because listing agents were screwing buyers over repeatedly.

If you want to dispense with the legal provisions the various States offer you, and that frankly buyer agents offer you at no cost, I simply don’t get it.

It’s an extremely rare unrepresented buyer that can both hold together their side of the transaction, and not get shot like fish in a barrel on contract terms and negotiation. You won’t even know how or if you were screwed until it’s too late to do anything about it.

And those unrepresented buyers that can do this, aren’t botching “I just want to see it” phone calls to random agents.

Jon: As a Free Agent Buyer I guess that means you expect an agent to work you for free?

In TX, when I get a sign call to see one of my listings, if you are truly unrepresented and want to buy the house, you have just put the intermediary ball into play, which ball, if I do not play correctly, could cost me my career.

I have a contractual obligation to my seller-he hired me. You are not privy to that contract, but one of the provisions in my contracts (I’ll share this one with you.) is that I do not show the house to financially unqualified buyers. My broker also has a contract with me which you are not privy to, and one of the provisions in that contract (Again I will share.) is that I meet all unknown buyers at the office and we photocopy the driver’s license of the buyer. While you are at the office, I will interview you as to your financial capability. Sorry, you don’t get to test drive my Ferrari without us knowing who you are.

If you insist in putting my career at risk with your free agency charade, there are plenty of free agent buyer agent doormen out there to let you in the house, and I am happy to pay the cooperation fee to them, in accordance with our MLS contract, to which again, you are not a party.

Simply put, a “free agent buyer” is a potentially huge legal and safety situation for a listing agent. If the listing agent gets testy perhaps it is because you are demamding that he violate his broker’s showing policy or his employment agreement, neither of which are your business.

“follow the travel agents into disintermediation”

Jon- Let me try one last time. The last time I checked, travel agents are not regulated by the state. If you as a free agent and all your free agent buddies can get the Texas legislature to change the law that we operate under, then we can all go skipping down the garden path in free agent bliss. As long as my listing agreements require me to be my seller’s fiduciary, you will have a tough time engaging me as a doorman.

My post was an attempt to explain how a free agent buyer is an incredibly risky proposition for a listing agent here in TX. You figure out how to get me off the fiduciary hook, and get my broker to sign off on it, and we can do business. There are other listing agents and brokers that may be willing to be your doorman for their listings, but some of us take our profession seriously and are excruciatingly conscientious about the execution of our duties. Yes, I said duties. Ever try to get a ticket refund when your travel agent booked the wrong flight? I make an error and it costs me six figures.

Get us off the fiduciary hook (FL has this type of law) and we can all play the free agent game. Until that time, you will just have to accept that your free agent proposition is not going to get you into every house you want to tour.

The customer in this case would be the seller.

The sellers are requesting we don’t kick them out of their house on the Friday night for buyers without the capablity to write an offer on their property.

If you can offer some proof of a mortgage pre-approval, are willing to meet at the office and produce a form of ID, and do this with the agent actually listing the house, there is usually no problem whatsoever in getting into a house.

CA is no different than AZ and TX. Once I have a substantial conversation with a person – free agent or whoever – I am now creating an agency relationship. That’s conversation. Not a written document. I am now bound by the law to provide information that this person may rely on in purchasing a particular property, whether I get paid or not, whether I represented them in a transaction or not.

If I tell the person that the lot size is X. They are able to rely on that – whether I officially or legally represent them or not. If somehow they get all the way through the transaction to ownership and then find out that the lot size is not X, I’d better get the money together for my insurance deductible.

It is my obligation to check the voracity of anyone coming into the house I represent for sale. One of the conversations I have repeatedly with my clients is that they remove all valuables – which includes jewelry, cameras, prescription drugs, fire arms, and generally anything that can be pocketed or pursed – from the home. We’re talking about inviting strangers into homeowners’ one place of safety from the world.

In terms of showing property to free agent buyers, I have done that under very specific circumstances. One is if their agent is unavailable for some reason. If the person is not represented by an agent I refer them to another realtor in my office.

I do not represent both sides – buyer and seller. Although that is quite legal and common in my market. In my opinion, that is a conflict of interest. I was hired by the seller to get them the most money in the shortest possible time for their property. Because I was hired by them first, my legal obligation to them comes first. So when hired to get a seller the most money for their property, how can I get the best deal for the buyer – which is what every buyer is looking for?

I understand, Jon, what your premise is. However, the laws that we speak of were designed to protect you the consumer. If you choose not to follow the guidelines as suggested and provided for your protection, that is of course your decision.

We are not talking about a business model. We are talking about following the law and keeping alive.

Between 1982 and 2000, more than 200 U.S. real estate agents were killed. Just two months ago, we received a police bulletin about a mother-son duo who was robbing open houses in my area. Fortunately they have been caught.

My job is in no harm of being phased out. In as litigious country as we are in, my job becomes more valuable and necessary with every lawsuit. It becomes strengthened by the little time people have to devote to selling/buying a home, learning the do’s and dont’s, filling out paperwork in the proper way, holding their own open houses, having the network of agents and clients I have to market their home to, knowing the market comparables not by pictures but by walking through the house and looking at the size, layout and condition from floor to ceiling. It becomes more invaluable every time I keep another client out of court. I become indispensable the longer I stay in business, the more classes I take, the more I learn and am able to filter the important facts from the rest.

How does a buyer know what the typical funding is for a homeowners association without having seen hundreds of them? Is 57% funding okay? How about 67? Who pays for the county transfer tax in this county? What’s the best way to hold title? What if the pest inspection is done and there’s work required? Who pays for that work? How do you negotiate that? Who do you even call for the inspection? How do you know they’re reputable? What do you do if they aren’t? How much should your initial deposit be when writing an offer? Does this report make sense? Is this what they all look like or is the seller trying to trick me? Should I disclose this? What if one party does not meet their timeline as stated in the contract?

Most people have the sense and the wisdom to know that they cannot possibly answer all of these questions on their own. They need an expert. That’s what we are.

Somewhere back there I must have said something about a buyer being represented by the listing agent. Just my opinion again but it’s a bad idea in my market. Maybe in others there’s no issue. But I can think of plenty of reasons not to risk it.

So, Jon, you want to risk it? Go ahead nobody is stopping you. Don’t worry about us or our business model. We know how to take care of ourselves. And if we don’t, then shame on us.

This thread really has become entertaining, particularly the part where I progressed from being an unreliable, unqualified waste of time to now being a potential thief or assailant.

In any case, I’ve learned some things from the conversation:
– As a free agent buyer, I’m nobody’s customer, even when I buy a property.
– There is a mix of opinions above about whether it is appropriate for a listing agent to show me their listing, and play both sides of the txn – this is interesting to me.
– The agents represented here (however small the sample size) see themselves as indispensable to the real estate transaction.
– You are all very confident and secure in your role, and feel no threat from the trends I described. Glad to hear business is so good.

Best of success to you all (sincerely). Thanks for the discussion.

R, Jon

Kelley,

Thanks for the clarification. No worries. One of the limitations of this medium is that you aren’t able to see the smile on my face as I wrote the part about the ‘potential thief or assailant’. I just couldn’t resist. No offense taken.

I do admit that I have never before considered that my call to a listing agent might raise concerns about safety, I’ll be more aware of and sensitive to those concerns in the future.

There is an agent here locally who has tried tirelessly to convince me that all these rules and procedures are for my protection, but frankly, I haven’t felt very protected in the past. I’ll also admit to being a bit jaded but a couple of previous negative experiences.

Thanks also for your remarks about my home search. I’m not in the Texas market as was previously asked, but in Oregon. The market here has slowed substantially in the past 6 months, but prices are still holding fairly firm, which is a bit of a mystery to me. In any case, we continue our search.

Thanks again for the thoughtful reply.

R, Jon