Call me Richard, Real Estate Agent Bane!
Our new house settles on Monday, so we are getting ready for the final inspection. Earlier in the week, Suzy called the agency to make an appointment for it, only to find that our usual agent was conspicuously absent from both the office and their website...
Yesterday I got a call from someone new and we set up a time. I asked what happened to the old agent, and was told that "she doesn't work for this company anymore".
This is after last week when I felt it necessary to make a complaint about her behaviour, after spending over a month trying to get an answer to a simple question (we needed measurements so that we could buy a new fridge). She spent four weeks ignoring my requests after initially promising to rush the measurements to me, and when she finally got her act together she didn't even get what I needed! So I cracked the shits after having wasted my time and left us with a broken fridge for an unnecessary month, and complained to her boss. Since then, I hadn't heard from her and the next thing I know she has either quit or been fired.
I can only assume that they had had ongoing issues with her and this ended up being the final straw.
Funnily enough, this isn't the first real estate agent we have sent packing! When we bought our first house, the agent we were renting through at the time went through some kind of meltdown, turned into a total cow and then suddenly vanished after trying to screw us out of our deposit. And the agent we BOUGHT through at the time also vanished without warning (but we hadn't had a problem with him at least) and the sale ended up being finalised by someone else.
Agents beware, you have been warned!
posted by Richard @ 7/07/2006 09:35:00 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Did the same thing when we sold our last house. Houses in the Blue Mountains all have minor evidence of termites. Its a natural fact when you live in amongst the bush.
We were aware of this, but this didnt seem like a problem. We then get a change of agent and suddenly it became an issue. EVERY prospective buyer walked away. No offers were made and we became increasingly stressed. Then the agent says he has a personal friend who may be keen. The friend comes through says great and walks out to the front yard to discuss an offer.
Agent comes in and says the offer is some $75K below our listed price because of the termites! I go ballistic and discover he has been blowing this minor issue (we had one tree stump in the backyard that had termites approx 10 years prior) up to buyers, getting us disgruntled and then getting his mate in when we were at a low ebb to try and swindle / pressure us into taking a low offer.
I jack up, blow up at the agency, demand a change of agent, threaten their commission and he is taken off our property.
The new agent sells it in a week for a nice offer and the old agent mysteriously ends up working at a rival agency some 6 weeks later... Damn scammer!
Wow, that is way worst than my agent! Mine was just lazy :)
Good thing you worked out what was going on, I wonder how often they managed to get a huge discount on an investment property doing that kind of thing!
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