Vancouver Condo Real Estate Video Blog #440 - November 9, 2009
Realtors Keeping the Real Estate Profession From Becoming A Profession
Ian Watt video blogs about how some realtors are keeping the real estate profession from becoming a profession in the eyes of the consumer. If you want to voice your opinion or if you don't care for Ian's comments please email your feedback to ianwatt@ianwatt.ca and visit http://www.ianwatt.ca/RealEstateVideos for all the Ian Watt Real Estate Video Blogs.
Ian Watt: Hi Good Morning, it's Ian Watt in Downtown Vancouver. The unfortunate thing about being a realtor is that the threshold of getting in to the industry is way to easy and the problem is there is a handful of people who manipulate the situation or the system or very extremely lazy and it gives the whole industry a bad name. It basically keeps our profession by becoming a profession in the eyes of consumer. Let me tell you a story about the realtor that I'm dealing with right now who has been by far the worst realtor I've ever dealt with in my life and I've done a lot of deals and I'm saying' a lot. Okay first of all last Saturday we have a situation were we wanna go see a property. What happened is we booked with the realtor and realtor says: yeah okay no problem, on Saturday we'll see you there. So we end up showing up there the realtors not there we phone and phone and phone and phone with have no in getting to the building. He says: okay hold on the owners are gonna come and let you in. Okay fantastic, the owner decided to let us in. So instead of the owners coming down an eight year old and a ten year old come down to the lobby. Make sure they know like they coming and they show us around the property, they take us up to the suite and I'm expecting to see some parents in there that are going to, you know be home with the kids. Sure enough no parents its an eight and ten year old letting two grown men getting in into their house. To show it off. They were fantastic, they're really great things and they knew a lot about the building which was great. However, it's totally unsafe. Well we'd like the property so we decided to write an offer. We write an offer on it on Sunday. It takes to Wednesday to track down the realtor in his clients and to get a counter offer. It is unbelievable. I've never had to deal with the situation like this. After that we have are subject removal on Monday. So were tryin' to get in there Monday morning for an inspection. He doesn't show up. The homeowner doesn't show up. He text me the homeowner's phone number and says: why don't you call him? He can let you in. So I call the homeowner, he has no idea that there is an inspection booked. Plus the strata council doesn't know either so we don't have access even to the boiler or anything like that. On top of that he hasn't order any of the documents for the strata documents that we require to make this deal go through. Meanwhile his financing is okay everything is approved. So we do an extension, we do an extension for one more week to make sure we get the financing or all the documentation and the inspection back booked one more time. So we go back there again sure enough he doesn't show up. He forgot to tell the strata council again and we don't have any documents again. It is completely ridiculous. I don't know what this guy is doing, I've never met him. I don't know what he looks like. I have no idea anything about this realtor. However he is making a very simple process so difficult just because a. he's not showing up and b. he's not doing his job. It's such an unfortunate thing, it's cost us four hundred dollars for an inspection twice now and we still don't have it done yet. It is ridiculous. I just can't believe that somebody hired this person. When your hiring a realtor look, call back, get some references, find out what they've been doing and get them to prove or print of their bca link list of all the sales and transactions they've done. Cause in Downtown Vancouver, they're a lot of people who say that their condo specialists but really truth truth be told Downtown Vancouver is a very unique market and if you haven't sold in that area. We do things a little bit differently than other areas. He's totally licensed and you know no problem at all in a legality way of working in that area. However you gonna know if your dealing on strata it is a lot different than selling a house. And Downtown Vancouver both realtors always show up for big appointments like this. My name is Ian Watt. Do your research and find out who should be working for you. If you have any questions. You can always email me at ianwatt@ianwatt.ca. Thank you very much and have a great day!