Sander Scott breaks down the three complaints he hears most about real estate agents: they seem lazy, they don't communicate well, and they're dishonest. Most of the time it's actually part-time work, poor choice of contact method, or an agent protecting a client's interests.
Hey there, everybody. I'm coming to you with the 3 most common complaints about realtors. Number 1 is laziness. And I think sometimes that's a perceived laziness rather than an actual laziness. If you're working with a part-time realtor who's got another job, they're probably more distracted than they are lazy. But the perception of laziness— and frankly, there are some realtors that don't have another job, are just sort of there to catch the gravy. They're just waiting around for business to kind of fall in their lap versus someone that's actively out there doing a lot of deals and hustling. My mother used to have a great saying that's, "If you want something done, done right and done quickly, ask a busy person to do it." And I think that's a little bit of what's true about working with a real estate agent. So The second biggest complaint is communication. A lot of realtors just don't stay in touch with their clients as often as the client would like. I kind of tailor my communication to my clients. One of the things I talk about is, "How would you like me to communicate with you?" Most often clients like just texting, but there are some clients that wanted to communicate through Facebook Messenger or they wanted a phone call. So I just sort of really customize the frequency and the style and then the medium, you know, whether it's text, phone call, so forth. DeeDee here wants me to throw the frisbee. But that's really one of the biggest complaints is communication. Then the last one is just dishonesty. You know, there's one thing that comes up, I think for the great majority of realtors are honest, they do uphold their code of ethics. There's one thing that I think sometimes when you're dealing with, when two different agents are working with one another, there can be a perception of playing games. And what I found is I'm just real upfront with the other agent. Or if I'm representing a seller and I've got a buyer working with me who doesn't have their own agent, I'm just really frank and upfront about what my role is for my client, which is I'm representing my client. And while I owe a duty and an obligation to all people for honesty, and I fulfill that, but I'm also really just blunt about, hey, it's my role to get the best deal for for my client. So in the case of representing a seller, when I've got more than one interested party, I do go back and forth between the two and say, hey, you know, if your client really likes this house, this is what it's going to take. And sometimes that results in a bidding war, and that can be perceived by some people as dishonest. I don't think that it— it absolutely is not dishonest. It's the agent working in the best interest of their client to get their client the best deal. And vice versa for a buyer's agent, you know, buyers have been the last few years really, it's been such a strong seller's market that the buyer just had to bend over backwards for the seller, but that's changing. And now buyers have options, you know, there's more and more inventory coming on the market. So when I'm acting as a buyer's agent, I'm saying to the seller, "Hey, my buyer likes your home, but there are other homes out there, and so your seller might lose this very interested buyer if we can't come to terms." And then I think there are a few, and I think most of the time the perception of dishonesty really is that it really comes down to the previous complaint about communication. When you're not communicating just bluntly and openly, then it can come across as dishonesty when really it might just be that the agent isn't great at communicating and just being blunt that, hey, I'm out for the best interest of my client, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. So anyway, those are the 3 biggest complaints. Laziness, which I think is often more attributable to distractions or that sort of thing. You can tell DeeDee's getting impatient. I gotta hurry up here. Communication, I like to again match my client's communication, what they desire in terms of frequency, style, and the medium, whether it's text, phone call, Facebook Messenger, that kind of thing. And then lastly, dishonesty, which I think every realtor that I've dealt with has been honest and upfront. I think sometimes there can be some issues with communication that lead to a perception of this, honestly. So anyway, there you go. Thanks a lot, appreciate you tuning in.
