Archive for August, 2008
Digital Passer-by Beware: Ideal Agent at Work!
August 8th, 2008
“Safety First!” is our agent’s motto… See for yourself, and you be the judge why the rest of the office thought this photo deserved admiration and publication.
Thanks to our trigger-happy office paparazzo Yuliya, you all get to enjoy, and we all get to share.
Ideal Agents
Can we work something out just between the two of us?
August 7th, 2008
You have just read the most innocent-sounding question the distant resonance of which most real estate agents dread.
This week’s nomination for the coveted “Rotten Apple of the Month” goes to a client who was shown a commercial property a few weeks ago… Having disappeared off the face of the planet for a number of weeks (after a number of showings of properties they professed to have “really, really liked,”) the client magically reappeared earlier this week.
Their re-emergence on the client scene in and of itself wouldn’t have warranted this write-up, had they actually contacted their agent. Instead, they contacted one of the properties’ owners directly, suggesting they would like to “cut the broker out of the picture.”
Interesting world we live in, where we don’t mind paying for services such as dog walking, but we don’t care to pay a fee where the service has been provided with utmost care and professionalism, and where corresponding fee was dully earned…
There’s always a rotten apple…
August 1st, 2008
… in a barrel. Be it a barrel of real estate agents, a barrel of landlords, or a barrel of tenants-to-be.
It would be a big fat lie, or at least a willful misrepresentation, to say that all of us (agents/brokers) are great.
Some of us are still in the training stage, on our way to a fully rewarding professional destiny… and have no clue what we’re doing.
Some of us unwillingly disregard our manager’s warnings for the day.
Some of us fail to get fully familiar with all the particulars of listings—or we may forget to pass crucially (or seemingly crucially) important information on to our clients.
By virtue of being human ourselves, there are days when we get up and start the day off by hating it. There are days when our boyfriends tell us they’d like to start seeing other people. There are days when our beloved pets die of cancer. There are days when our mothers manage to convince us to visit the family friends we never liked. There are days when the lunar cycles are just simply off.
But most of those days are rare.
And most of our work days are great, because we work in a great firm. We joke around, we tease each other, we share details about listings, we share our professional and private stories.
And most of the clients we encounter on a daily basis are great people, in need of a good, honest, professional service. And the “most” in the previous sentence can be hypothetically quantified at 99.9%
But there’s always that .01%
What a small number, and what a big pain!
We all surely agree that reality warrants a dutiful blog entry whenever identified. So, from now on, we promise to bring you a monthly “Rotten Apple of The Month” column… We will faithfully record events and situations, take a vote on the one deserving of a blog mention, and present the “rottenest” entry to our blog readers.
This month’s rottenest client will remain a secret, because we’re still trying to get one of our agents off the ledge of mental distraction.
Cheers.
