The customer is always right… except when buying a house

Florian and I are in the market to buy our very first home and the experience has been rather surprising. We found a great apartment in Lane Cove and fell in love instantly (mistake #1) however the agent was everything you’d expect when it comes to someone in real estate- a big fat LIAR!

Now, don’t get me wrong, my future brother-in-law is a wonderful real estate agent and he’s amazing at his job, so let’s caveat this post with that.

However, this guy was a piece of work. I won’t name any names because I would hope if I was terrible at my job, someone wouldn’t write a blog about me.

So let’s go back to the start…

We went to check out the place a few weeks back, and I don’t think he realised Flo and I were together because he told us two different prices. He told me it was $750k to $770k and to Flo, he informed it was $700k-$750k, so not sure why I was quoted higher, maybe I looked like I had more money than Flo?

I texted him a fortnight after the first viewing with a question- granted it wasn’t the brightest question- and he replied with the laughing emoji. No words, no call, just 😂. Think of all the times you’ve wanted to roll your eyes at a client or reply a ARE YOU SERIOUS?! to an email but have decided to remain professional and polite and responded like an actual adult and not a teenager.

Fast-forward to this week and we asked to go back to the apartment to check it out, to which he agreed to show us privately and we put our offer in on Tuesday afternoon. He said he’d take it to the seller and get back to us. Wednesday came and went and we hadn’t heard back so, on Thursday, Florian began writing an email to follow up with him. I jumped onto the app to get his email address and to our surprise, the property was changed to Sold!

He didn’t even get back to us, he didn’t text, send an email or use a smoke signal to just give us a heads up that we missed out.

Do people in real estate perhaps forget that when you’re looking at buying something that’s three-quarters of a million dollars, you should perhaps respect the customer?

I spoke to a few friends and these are just some of the anecdotes they shared from their experience:

‘…Buying a property is such an exciting time, but unfortunately, some agents have the ability to make you (and your money) feel worthless. To them, it’s just a numbers game!’

‘…Very disappointing! You’ll find that real estate agents are pretty ruthless. The agent we dealt with on this apartment was incredibly challenging once our offer was accepted (i.e. lied about our rooftop access and the number of keys that would be provided on settlement)’

‘…it’s actually horrible and realtors are all snakes. Never trust them because they’ll betray you. We were really trusting at first but after the first two times we got burnt I went full Karen on them’

‘...The same thing happened to me on one… I got a notification from realestate.com.au saying it had sold and old mate didn’t even bother to call. Real estate agents are the worst!! But at least now you’re in the game’

Maybe I am old fashioned and am applying my retail experience out of context. I know selling a dress and a house are not the same thing, I guess, but the same principles apply though, right? I worked in a variety of stores throughout uni from Myer to Lorna Jane and I was always told to respect the customer and make them happy.

Perhaps when becoming a real estate agent that notion is flipped on its head and they follow a more treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen mentality. But mean translates to send laughing emojis, interrupting you when you’re talking and not bothering enough to call or text us that our offer had been rejected.

Well, Mr Real Estate agent, we’re still in the market for an apartment, and if we come across your name next to a property, we will be ready to play a little dirtier!