There might have been a time (not in my real estate career of about 9 years or more if you include the real estate I did as a private investor) that you needed a stern Realtor that was an ass. Those days are long gone. It still shocks me the way some real estate agents treat their clients as well as other agents. There are time that deals close in spite of one the other real estate agents doing all they can do to tank the deal.
I had a broker, actually the broker that owned the firm, recently tell me “you control your clients and I will control mine” then a couple texts later he said “if you don’t we won’t be able to work together”. I thought to myself “is this tool working in the best interest of his clients?” Is tanking this deal something he is doing because his clients asked him to? Is this broker standing in the way of a willing buyer and willing seller because of his ego? This was a unique property and because of that buyers weren’t beating down the door to buy it. It had actually fallen out of contract twice in a seller’s market. So who is this broker working for? His client or his own ego?
It seems too many real estate agents have seen Glengarry Glen Ross and feel this is how the real estate business works. A good Realtor looks at a deal and thinks “I have a willing buyer and a willing seller. How do we get this across the finish line?” That same real estate agent also knows that it is in the best interest of his client. He is working for his client but if the client really wants to buy or sell the home then it is in the best interest to make this happen. A real estate agent puffing out their chest and just being an ass is to no one’s benefit. It usually shows the insecurity and lack of knowledge that agent has. They don’t know what to do so they get angry and think that if they act like a tough person that will make it look like they know what they are doing. Anyone with a day’s experience knows that isn’t true.
I also was doing a deal with a broker, yes another owner broker, that almost blew a deal because they didn’t want to update the seller’s property disclosure. On the SPD it said there were structural issues. The broker insisted there were not. I asked him to have his seller change that and resign the document. Yes a signed document said one thing and the broker claimed something else. After a couple of days of not signing this document that is required, the broker gets all upset and lashes out “Your client should be happy if there are structural issues and we are disclosing it!!” The broker failed to realize that perhaps my client did not want to purchase a home with structural problems, disclosed or not. This broker came about 3 seconds from tanking this deal.