Rant...

I normally don't rant on my blog, but today's experience is definitely rant worthy. I'm subbing for an agent from my office, while he's away on vacation and his buyers reached out to me last night wanting to see a property this morning. Since it was after 9pm when I received their email last night and they wanted to see the property at 10:30am today, I called the listing agent last night to give him and his sellers a heads up that I would be booking an appointment with his office this morning. I thought I would be courteous to the sellers by giving them more then an hours notice and also get some information from the listing agent about the property since it's been on the market for almost a month.


So off we trek from downtown Toronto this morning to L'Amoreaux in Scarborough with my client, a 7 month old baby and her mother who is visiting from out of town in tow. We show up at the property and I can't find the lockbox. So I call the agent saying there's no lockbox, but he says "I gave it to my sellers to install and place the key inside"....mistake #1. My understanding as a listing agent is that we should go to the property ourselves to install the lockbox and also gives us an opportunity to see our clients, the state of the house right before the listing hits the market and advise them what else, if anything should be done. Clearly this agent did none of those things, maybe he was too busy sleeping. So it's not surprising the clients didn't install the lockbox either.

I'm ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door and no one is answering. The clients inform me, that they know someone is home because right before I arrived they saw someone go inside the house. The listing agent is calling his clients and of course can't get a hold of them. Finally after about 10 doorbell rings and 20 knocks on the door, the door finally opens, success....I think not! The seller first of all looks at me like I'm an alien, I introduce myself and say we have a confirmed appointment for this morning. Impossible, they've taken the property off the market and I think what the @$%*! The clients are dumbfounded as well and I don't blame them. I ask the seller why did you confirm the appointment and didn't you inform your listing agent, and he says they didn't confirm anything and they called their agent but didn't get a hold of him.

I mean somewhere in the middle is the actual truth, but come on! What happened to open communication with your clients? What happened to checking in on them? How do you not know your client decided to take their house off the market? How do you not return your clients calls, period! Clearly these sellers were not ready or committed to ever selling the listing and completely wasted mine and the client's time. It's the listing agent's job to ask the right questions and determine whether the seller is committed and motivated to sell. The seller should also ask themselves some questions to see if they are ready to sell, here are some to start the seller off, just click here.

Bottom line this profession is riddled with mediocrity which gives, us, the good agents a bad rap and my point was proven yet again today. There has to be higher standards in place for people to even begin thinking of becoming a Realtor, it's too easy right now! Hopefully things will change in the future, but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime if the good Realtors keep pushing forward, eventually we will weed out the bad ones!