A Note to You Crappy Real Estate Agents Out There

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Got your attention Realtors? Good!
I’m not accusing all agents of being crappy, but there are some of them who are giving the rest of you a bad name!

In the current real estate environment where vacant homes litter our neighborhoods, a flock of crappy real estate agents reign control over our futures. These are the agents who do a half-ass job of protecting the interests of their clients.

If you represent a vacant property, it is your job to not only get get that property sold, but to also do your best to manage and protect it from robbers, and other mischief makers.

Make An Example of This Guy!

A few months ago an elderly woman in my neighborhood had to move out of her home to go to hospice, and unfortunately, her family lives out of the country. This family put their faith in a real estate agent, who was to get the home sold and keep watch over it. Weeks later, as door flyers and other junk collected on the front of the home, I saw an agent around the property. I walked up to him to talk about the junk that was collecting and let him know that he or someone else from his firm needed to visit the property on a more regular basis to keep all the junk off the door/stoop.

This jerk told me that it wasn’t part of his job description.

I argued briefly with him, trying to make clear that part of his duty in this type of situation was to ensure that the home was safe, and that meant making sure that people knew that it was being cared for, but he could care less. I’m not sure whether the person I spoke with was the actual agent representing the client, or someone at the property on his behalf, but either way, he was 100% in the wrong, and was doing his client a disservice.

According the the National Association of Realtors:

REALTORS® who are employed to maintain or manage a client’s property shall exercise due diligence and make reasonable efforts to protect it against reasonably foreseeable contingencies and losses. (Adopted 1/95)

This guy gives a bad name to all real estate agents. Not only does he reflect poorly on his managing broker and brokerage firm, but he is one of the reasons that people look at real estate agents as being akin to used car salesmen and politicians.

So . . . if the rest of you agents (the good ones) want to get your reputations back, put a kibosh on this type of attitude and teach your fellow agent of what his duty is.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.