Sunday, May 30, 2010

How not to sell a house

This one's for you, Realtors!

1. Don't call the seller to say you're running two hours late on a showing.

2. Don't call the seller to say you're not coming at all.

3. Show up at the seller's house without making an appointment first, beg your way in anyway, then casually reveal later your "client" is your daughter.

4. Get so chitchatty with the seller you fail to notice your client has let the seller's small child out onto the balcony.

5. Stay home sick, but send your clients over anyway to roam a stranger's home unescorted.

6. While running an open house at a different unit, tell a random unescorted person to go check out seller's unit, without calling seller's agent first, just for kicks.

7. Get so distracted by cooing over seller's cute baby that you forget to give seller your card.

8. Make it exquisitely clear you'd rather deal with husband seller than wife seller, from returning phone calls to introducing yourself. Because wife seller, obviously, is brainless idiot who makes no money.

9. Bring in snotty out-of-state clients who know nothing about (still-pricey) North Jersey market and snottily declare, "If I had to live here, I'd kill myself," before ditching agent while he's in the bathroom.

10. Bring stairs-allergic clients to a unit with two sets of stairs.

aaaannndd finally:

11. Make lowball offer that sellers spend days negotiating to a halfway decent offer, get outbid by a better offer, throw an e-mail tantrum at seller's agent in which you declare sellers are not trustworthy and you found your clients a way better deal in the same complex anyway, so nyah nyah. Then call seller's agent days later to explain deal was not so good after all, and what's the status of the seller's deal again? Definitely under contract? Oh.