Buyers agents are worthless (Realtors, seller, standard, MLS)

[NORMGLO]

It sounds like your expectations were not met - never hire anyone without first clearly defining what is expected.

Some believe that a buyer's agent's responsibilities are greater than those of the listing/seller agent. In addition to the obvious job of helping you find the right home, the buyer's agent is instrumental in helping you negotiate your best price. There are numerous steps that have to be taken between the time a buyer selects a property and the time of actual closing so selecting the right members of your team (agent, attorney, home inspector, and lender) is very important and can take away a lot of the stress that can come with purchasing real estate.

When things go smoothly in a real estate transaction it sometimes means that everyone did their job well.

[girlofthebeach]

I cannot comment on the not returning phone calls part....that is usually the first rule of service from a buyer/seller agent.

The buyer's agent usually deserves every penny they earn. I have buyers that I have successfully represented and gotten them into a home they liked/loved who are very appreciative of my efforts. Luckily, this makes up for all those:
example 1:
1. Spend over a year finding and emailing properties that hopefully meet their ridiculous requirements.
2. Spend 3 days driving this person around 4 four! counties to see properties she has selected to see.
3. None of them "hit her". Referred her to someone in my brokerage who works another county for the last day and that realtor couldn't do it either.
4. Never hear a word from her....

example 2:
1. Spend a year and a half locating properties, showing at buyer's limited requested times, writing about 5 or 6 offers, in contract 3 times.
Buyer decides to buy land from family member and build, and says, so sorry, but we don't need you any more.

There are many more like this, so I reflect on all the time on the buyers who respected my time and were grateful for my efforts, and are happy in their homes so that I can keep motivated in this business.

There are so many things a buyer's agent does during the search process ( even previewing homes), the in contract details, and the closing process -- and after the closing that the buyer never sees, because our job is to respect their time, reduce their stress, etc.

Oh, and what about the one that looks for 1 month, drops out of home search for 8 months while renting, then gets back in touch, "ready to buy" and looks at properties for less than another month. Then says "I am going to another agent because you didn't find me a house in a year". And I picked up this man at his home for every home viewing trip and drove him everywhere.

Hope that this helps the OP see things from a little different perspective.

[lovesMountains]

Originally Posted by zz4guy

My agent showed me about 6 properties, filled out a couple legal documents and was at the closing for 30min. Then he pockeets 3% ($3500) and doesn't even return my phone calls later. Seriously how can these people command this much money for such little work and bring so little to the table?

Perhaps not returning your calls after the closing has more to do with his attempt to distance himself from a difficult client?

A good buyers agent is worth their weight in gold. Did you do your research to find one?

[gentlearts]

In defense of buyer's agents. Our's showed us about 20 properties in 2 days, recommended our mortgage servicer, recommended our inspection companies, set us up with an attorney to handle our closing, and is highly effficient in every way. We needed expediency and she provided it and her recommended support people provided it.

I should mention at this point that she drives, talks on the phone, eats a sandwich, and punches things into her GPS simultaneously, which is a bit off-putting.

Since we are in another state, she is good at frequent email updates and keeps her finger on the pulse of our transaction.

The only thing detrimental that I noticed is that the buyer must remain in the driver's seat when making offers on a property, because once we started negotiating on a specific property our agent seemed to be more interested in making the deal go through than making the deal go through at the lowest possible price.

[eric#1]

I suspect the agent did a great job since it seems all went quite smooth. Others seem to avoid/or defend the not returning your calls part. I think that part is B.S. I suspect you have a cell phone or email and the agent could at least drop you a quick message - if too busy then the agent needs to work more hours to tend to your call in some fashion. I will not leave my clients hanging like that if I truly was that busy it would be time to refer some business out or get an assistant, but most certainly not avoid a client.

The only excuse would be agent is in hospital, out of country, dead, or tending a major family emergency - in that case you should call the office if it is urgent I suspect someone will assist you.

[DLW007]

I've been an agent for over 8 years. I've never gone to a closing (at least that's how it's done in NY for the most part). However, if a buyer or seller calls me after closing, I always return the call. Usually it's something that they have to speak to someone else about but it's still courteous to call back. We cannot help it if we do our job the right way and we find a client the house of their dreams within a few days. What are we supposed to do? Wait? Nope. That's poor practice and the client will lose the house. What's the point? I think this person just wanted to complain because they had nothing better to do. Sorry but this is common. I've negotiated deals up to 1am while my clients are fast asleep. I've gone without eating for an entire day, I've spent counless hours away from my family, braved the worst weather to show houses, work weekends, I've dealt with some real doozies as clients and as colleagues. Trust me, most of us agents work our butts off for our commissions and sometimes we are underpaid for the kind of work we have to do to make people happy. Don't even get me started on the Continuing Ed courses we are required to take on top of working full time. Anyone who thinks we are lazy is dead wrong. This isn't an easy job and with the economy the way it is, it's been tougher on us.

[Tish Thompson]

Correction: the agent you chose to work with is worthless. Buyer's agents as a whole are not worthless. I am a listing agent, but have worked with buyer's. Not one of them would feel about me the way you feel about your agent. Just like anything else, you have to do your homework. Next time, get a referral from family or friends. That way you won't have to take the agents word that he/she will do what's promised then fail to come through.

Originally Posted by zz4guy

My agent showed me about 6 properties, filled out a couple legal documents and was at the closing for 30min. Then he pockeets 3% ($3500) and doesn't even return my phone calls later. Seriously how can these people command this much money for such little work and bring so little to the table?

[campmom123]

I think sometimes things go like the op's situation and it seems like the buyer agent does nothing, but other times..... they might put in a LOT of hours, and things fall thru and they make nothing for that work. So it's a strage line of work where it evens out I guess.

I know my buyer's agent worked his butt off for us. We finally got the 3rd house we put an offer on, but first he did two other houses where we countered a whole bunch, lost the first one, got the second but the sellers backed out of the contract. So he paid the inspection for us since it wasn't our fault, and we went on to the third house where he also paid a couple of days worth of rent when our financing was delayed 2 more days, etc. He did a LOT for us. And the house we bought wasn't that expensive, so he didn't really make bank or anything.

Now if we'd just bid on one house and got it right away with everything going easily and we closed on time easily, it would seem like he didn't do that much. But we got one of those times where he ended up having to do a lot. KWIM?

[scuba steve]

The last agent I had was absolutely worth it. I had identified a region of the city we were moving to that looked promising, but she was able to better narrow it down and knew which neighborhoods were the better ones to go for. In the span of the 5 day relocation trip I had we were able to look at 20+ houses, then a few for a second trip and narrow it down to a top 3, then get a contract written up and schedule an inspection. Then she was able to handle the transaction with me two time zones to the west and 2,500 miles away, and the owners who had moved out of state to the east coast.

It's too bad that I won't be able to go with her for the next house because the next time I move it will probably be to another city again.

[miyu]

The reason why real estate agents might lose their worth is because they are entirely replaceable. A couple of months and a hundred bucks and I could have my real estate license. I coudl use any of the listing sites to get the same information. I honestly haven't seen any agents who have offered me anything different than what I have been able to dig up online by myself. The only use they serve is if I want to see a house that doens't have an open house. However, everytime I call the number in front of the home, nobody ever picks up. NEVER.

In an industry where ones value is already questionable, it is quite amazing how these agents don't realize that they should be raising their standards to preserve the worth of their services/industry.