Enough with the aggressive real estate agents!

QUICK NOTE: I’m writing this week, but never fear. Mr. Ken still has a few blog posts up his sleeve, so he will be back.

The housing market here in Massachusetts is hot, to say the least. There is a lot of pent up demand, but not a lot of inventory on the market. So, the true colors of some real estate agents are coming out. I guess some people think that all bets are off in a competitive market.

Here’s the story of two really annoying real estate agents I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with.

Story 1.

A small house on our street went on the market. First day of the open house, there must have been 100 people lined up to get in! Say what? Needless to say, the house sold that first day and went for well over asking price.

A week or so later, we get a call from a 516 area code with “name unavailable.” Um, no we don’t answer calls like this since they always turn out to be robocallers. This person left a cryptic message, “Hello, I would like to talk to you about selling your house.” Yah, right. I ignored the call. A few days later, the person called again with the same cryptic message. Just an FYI, 516 is the area code for Long Island, New York.

Upon doing a little digging, I find out this number belongs to the real estate agent who sold the small house on our street. So, I call her back and politely ask her to stop bothering us and to never call us again.

Talk about a way to lose a sale. This person was so unprofessional. There are at least three things she did wrong:

1. Not having a “professional” phone number, e.g. one that clearly says which real estate agency she is with.
2. Not having a local number.
3. Not even mentioning in her message that she recently sold a house on our street.

Story 2.

The mail comes and there is a machine-addressed envelope. Inside there is a a letter saying, “I would like to talk to you about selling your house to a client of mine.” Oh really? I don’t know you and I have no intention of selling my house to someone who sends me junk mail.

The one plus for this guy was that his letter clearly stated what agency he works for. I recognized his name from seeing it on several “For Sale” signs around my town.

However, this whole thing did not sit well with me. Once again, I called the phone number listed in the letter and told him how I felt:

1. I was extremely insulted by his letter. Is he so desperate to sell houses that he sends junk mail to complete strangers, wanting to talk to them about selling their houses?
2. Using junk mail. The least he could have have done is personally address the envelope.

To make matters worse, a week later I received yet(!) another junk mail solicitation from this agent. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out if you annoy people, they won’t do business with you.

So there are at least two real estate agents (and agencies) that I will never use if and when we decide to sell our house.

What real estate horror stories do you have?