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When we were stuck with our dud he was assigned to us by the broker. The agent we signed up with told us all paperwork had to be in the brokers name. Then she left the agency and we were given a moron much like the OP describes.
In my neck of the woods, agents take their clients with them when they change brokers, provided the client agrees.
I am sorry you were assigned a dud. Be aware you can ask the broker for a different agent.
Well put. The statistics on how many people hire the first agent they meet are astounding. In my experience, RE consumers would rather just complain about their agent instead of firing them.
Bottom line is . . . interview multiple agents and fire your agent if they do a poor job. Eventually when these agents don't make any money the problem will correct itself.
Seems to me that many consumers think all agents are alike. Others have no criteria or experience interviewing.
Sellers have a tendency to like the agent who recommends the highest listing price.
Many agents and clients don't have upfront conversations about communication expectations.
I have been to open houses where the listing agent was more interested in collecting names of potential buyers to market to later; as opposed to bringing in qualified buyers for that particular house. The agents were essentially using this poor seller's house as their own marketing/networking office.
The whole point of having an open house is in fact, primarily (if not solely) for the real estate agent to market herself or himself.
The vast majority of open houses I have ever attended (I am not an agent) were visited primarily by neighbors of the house for sale. I do it, too. We all want to peek in and see what changes the neighbors have made to their house, and we compare the property with our own even if we are not ready to sell our own house. It's not only human nature, but a wise thing to do, i.e. to keep one's eye on the real estate market in their area.
A very experienced broker/agency owner who is a friend freely admits that is the main reason for holding open houses and that most houses are sold to people who never attended an open house for the property they buy (with the exception of investors who attend to gauge how much it might cost them to flip the house for profit). More often serious buyerss come with their own agent at another time, especially if the house has a lock box. When we were seriously looking to buy, that's what we did, although we also attended some open houses, since the houses were all a couple of hours away from here. The best houses we saw were with our agent; however, we didn't find a place we wanted to buy at the time. And now we are less interested in that area.
Have you ever noticed how much space on the house flyer is taken up by a photograph and information about the listing agent? It's usually something like a quarter of the entire page in my area, if not more.
and put me in the group that believes barriers to entry should be much higher. We are licensed professionals. We'll never be surgeons, and we're not attorneys, but we shouldn't be too far behind attorneys as regards knowledge and practice of our trade.
I totally agree. I'm so sick of worrying about stepping over the line of "acting as an attorney." I am careful but it is very easy to technically go too far. As I've said many times before, for every court case, there's an attorney who thinks one thing and another who disagrees so it's not like the law and lawyers are this one monolithic block of thought. Granted, we should never be on an equal footing with attorneys but I think we should be the equivalent of paralegals who can advise, interpret, and write clauses within a narrow scope of the law without fear of losing everything. As far as I'm concerned, I'd like to see real estate sales licensees be required to take a real-estate specific paralegal program (maybe a one year community college program) that is essentially all about contract law and real estate law.
1: 80% to 85% of all people that become real estate agents, will fail out of the business because they don't earn enough money to make a living. A large percentage of those failures never even make one sale, or have a listing sold. They took a course to be able to pass the real estate exam, and have very little training by the broker they work for. They are thrown out there to sink or swim. Most sink.
2: 80% of all real estate is sold by 20% of the agents/brokers. They are the ones that succeeded while the vast majority of agents fail out.
The problem is, the public does not know if the agent they try to work with, is one of the 20% or one of the 80%. The example above of the agent that instead of meeting their client for a showing, went shopping at Walmart is typical of the attitude a lot of new agents have.
3: Open houses, are held to find potential buyers to work with, not to sell a particular house where the open house is held. Only about 1% of homes are sold to someone going to an open house. The sellers think the agent is really trying to sell the home. Wrong. They are holding the open house looking to find 1 or 2 actual potential buyers that they may sell a home to, but not that one.
There's a fallacy in the theory that it should be the client's responsibility to weed out incompetent agents. Most clients simply don't have the skills to do that. It's not their forte. Why should they have to spend years learning the real estate business and how to evaluate real estate agents, just so they can buy or sell one property?
That's why we need better state licensing agencies, who would do a seriously competent job of weeding out the incompetents. All professions need that. Even attorneys. In some states the average attorney is so sleazy and incompetent that any client who doesn't know how to evaluate attorneys falls into a disaster by choosing one of the average ones. But the average person only needs an attorney once or twice in their lives. Why should they be required to be experts at choosing attorneys? Why should people who are sleazy enough to need attorneys frequently be able to take advantage of their extensive lifelong experience with attorneys to more easily choose a competent one while the average citizen without that sleazy experience gets stuck with the sleazy incompetent ones? In some states, the state bar association takes that issue seriously, but in other states they don't. From their point of view, clients are worthless morons who take up too much of their time, and the job of the state bar association is to make things easier for attorneys, not for clients. A lot of them actually see clients as a commodity to be taken advantage of.
We need good state agencies for every profession, whose first priority should be to keep the profession competent and ethical. But we generally don't have them. The people that work for them are generally from that profession, and more inclined to support other people in that profession, than their victims, because the divide between the professionals and their victims is a divide all of them have been on the professional side of for most of their careers.
This is true for all professions. It's a good argument in favor of licensing agencies being very strict about competence, and not leaving any of it to "caveat emptor." But how can we get there, where incompetent professionals would not be able to victimize naive clients? How can we get there, when the people that regulate the professionals are the professionals themselves?
There's a fallacy in the theory that it should be the client's responsibility to weed out incompetent agents. Most clients simply don't have the skills to do that. It's not their forte. Why should they have to spend years learning the real estate business and how to evaluate real estate agents, just so they can buy or sell one property?
That's why we need better state licensing agencies, who would do a seriously competent job of weeding out the incompetents. All professions need that. Even attorneys. In some states the average attorney is so sleazy and incompetent that any client who doesn't know how to evaluate attorneys falls into a disaster by choosing one of the average ones. But the average person only needs an attorney once or twice in their lives. Why should they be required to be experts at choosing attorneys? Why should people who are sleazy enough to need attorneys frequently be able to take advantage of their extensive lifelong experience with attorneys to more easily choose a competent one while the average citizen without that sleazy experience gets stuck with the sleazy incompetent ones? In some states, the state bar association takes that issue seriously, but in other states they don't. From their point of view, clients are worthless morons who take up too much of their time, and the job of the state bar association is to make things easier for attorneys, not for clients. A lot of them actually see clients as a commodity to be taken advantage of.
We need good state agencies for every profession, whose first priority should be to keep the profession competent and ethical. But we generally don't have them. The people that work for them are generally from that profession, and more inclined to support other people in that profession, than their victims, because the divide between the professionals and their victims is a divide all of them have been on the professional side of for most of their careers.
This is true for all professions. It's a good argument in favor of licensing agencies being very strict about competence, and not leaving any of it to "caveat emptor." But how can we get there, where incompetent professionals would not be able to victimize naive clients? How can we get there, when the people that regulate the professionals are the professionals themselves?
If you listen you have discovered that some large majority of the successful agents agree with you. So it is not the RE Agents who want the low entry into the profession.
Blut the brokerage houses make their money from the agents...not from the clients. And they don't want any tightening of the requirements. So it is simple. Figure out how to get rid of the brokerages....
It's easy to get the license, one week school and one test later, anyone can get started. Everyone thinks it's easy to do the job. And, unfortunately, the "two shot wonders" outnumber those who take the job seriously and are very good at what they do.
I can't think of a profession with such a wide variety of licensed participants. Some are bored "housewives" with a variety of educational backgrounds. Retired teachers, nurses, policemen and other second profession people comprise another group. There are well educated people who lack direction, house flippers with an agenda, contractors and speculators.
There are white collar and blue collar people who involved in Real Estate. Yet it is perceived as a "white collar" profession.
In social psychology there is a term "easy in, easy out". This refers to organizations, professions, colleges, neighborhoods and clubs that are relatively easy places to gain acceptance. The lack of barriers attracts a diverse group of people. Some serious. Others not so much. The ease with which one gains entrance is negatively correlated with the dedication that the accepted individual devotes to that group. RE is "easy in".
I think that all real estate brokers should at least have an associate degree. I also think that associate degrees in Real Estate should be offered.
If someone already has an associate degree or better - the RE degree should be waved.
If a RE person uses sub standard English, I will admit, I am likely to use a different agent. I think that the presence of people who sound and act less than professional, brings down the profession for others who are serious and committed to what they do.
Real Estate is a very important profession and as of now, is the easiest white collar career to enter. I don't believe that RE sales people require BAs or MAs. But certainly, there should be some uniform standard.
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