If You’re Tired of Your Sacramento Agent

It seems like lately I’ve been contacted by sellers and friends of sellers who want to cancel their existing listings and list with me. For whatever reasons, they are unhappy or they feel like they are not getting the service they expected. Sometimes, this is the fault of the listing agent and sometimes it is not. I won’t know until I actually talk with the sellers and hear the story. However, there are always two sides to a story.

Like yesterday, a seller contacted me to say she wanted to buy a home in East Sacramento. Apparently, she is selling a home in Natomas and has decided that she and her husband should try to buy a short sale in East Sacramento, a home priced around $300,000 to $400,000 that would actually be worth $500,000 to $600,000. Yes, I know what you are thinking right now, dear reader. You are thinking that I should have hung up the phone or not corresponded with this particular person, but President Obama says we should be nice to people who have mental deficiencies. That a mental disease is not a reason to shun people or pick on them or discriminate against them.

I wanted to make sure I heard this person correctly and to double check if she had indeed put her home on the market in Natomas. So I queried as to whether she was asking me to list her home in Natomas and buy a new home East Sacramento. She replied that her home was already listed by an agent but her agent was too busy to help her buy a home in East Sacramento.

That didn’t make sense. Agents are rarely “too busy” to help a client. It’s what we do for a living. We sell real estate. Even if an agent was otherwise occupied, perhaps taking a vacation, for example, an agent would refer the client to another agent who had time. There must be something else going on. So, I asked the person to give me her agent’s name and phone number.

That was the last I heard from her.

Generally, I will call other agents before accepting a listing. Just to hear the other side of the story and to assure the agent that I am not in the business of soliciting other agent’s clients. That’s not how I do business. I don’t swipe somebody else’s clients. Most of the time what I discover is there is a lack of communication. Sometimes, the relationship terminated due to agent ineptness or carelessness or inexperience. But rarely is it malicious as people sometimes suspect.

If I spot a listing that is on the market for a few days and then canceled, generally, that’s not a listing I want to take. It’s a clear signal there is something wrong, and let’s just say it’s not the agent.