Confessions of an ex-REO team agent...

Due to non-disclosures I signed, I cannot elaborate….

haha, ok, I’m still friends with these people, so I wont throw anyone under the bus or anything.

About this section: I worked for 2.5 years on a top producing REO team. After nearly 450 transactions passing through my hands personally (about 650 total for the whole team) as a transaction coordinator, I crashed and burned and quit. It wasnt pretty.

The truth is, REO listing is very monotonous, all task oriented and downright boring. Essentially, after you WIN the business (not my job), its all the same 5 activities over and over and over (and over, my job). Times that by a few hundred listings, and you now know why that REO broker wont return your phone call. Besides the commission check, there is no gratification with this sort of work either. Long days of BPOs, hundreds of emails, grumpy agents bitching you out, and very little to no creativity equals burnout. Well, for staff anyways. A good REO agent will become untouchable, handing all menial (and sometimes extremely important) tasks, phone calls and communication over to the staff (me). And if things go well enough, the REO agent barely has to show up at all and things will run smoothly if their staff is good enough. I know 3-4 agents like this, and on the other hand I know top producing agents who show up every day and are involved in the BPOs and occupancy checks and talking to asset managers and… you get the idea. The owner was the latter, personally doing BPOs and all the REALLY fun day to day tasks and I respect him for that.

Its not an EASY job either. Between waiting for reimbursements from the bank, scheduling lawn care, dealing with squatters, kicked in doors, graffiti, bitchy agents, managing brokers, whiny staff (not me), MLS violations, city violations, broken pipes, field inspectors, home inspectors, appraisers, flooded basements and complaints to the real estate commission, the 2% paycheck cannot be worth it. Keep this fun in mind the next time you want to chew out an REO agent for not returning your call in 5 minutes.

I’m getting together more detailed questions to answer, and to answer them the best that I can for part 2 of this. I hope to keep this series going, with at least one post per month with stories, observations and experience from the 2.5 years I worked on a top producing REO team. Since I quit due to burnout, I think this is more for me than anyone who would read this.

Insert creative REI blog name here

Confessions of an ex-REO team agent...