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May 14, 2010 07:41 AM

I am fascinated in this profession with how many agents seem to not care whether or not their listings sell. I see listings with hundreds of DOM with no pictures, or blurry ones, pictures of messy rooms or clearly dated ones with snow when we are now in spring. Inadequate remarks, no room dimensions, bad directions — we’ve all seen them. But yesterday I experienced something that truly blew me away. My client at the last minute mentioned a house she wanted to add to our tour. So I looked it up on my Blackberry and it said to call Centralized Showing. So I did, and they had no record of the home. I called the Alt Agent, which was also listed as a showing contact — straight to voicemail. So I finally called the listing agent and explained my situation. I asked if we could see it within a 1/2 hour or so (mind you in this market most of the homes on the market are vacant), and he smugly said oh sure you do. I reminded him that his showing instructions said nothing about an hour or 24 hour notice, nothing about anything except for call first CSS, and no sign on property. His response was again, obdurate.

So after his 2nd rude response, I asked him if we can see it or not, and he said he’d have to get back to me. Have to get back to me? I am sorry, but if you don’t even know how to get into your listings, you’ve got too many. Mind you, he did not say, the owner works from home I’ll have to call her and get back to you, or something like it. He said, I need to get back to you and was extremely put out by the whole thing. The house looked semi-vacant or in move-out mode in the pictures. The marketplace and neighborhood I was showing in is not hot, it’s a place where prices have plummeted and most of the houses I was showing were vacant. I suggested to my buyer that we skip this one since we had so many others to see and pointed out what a nightmare it would be to work with these people if they make showing so difficult.

So I decided to investigate this house and agent a bit more after I got back to the office. It has been on and off the market since 2008, rented in 2009 and now back on for sale at $109,000 less than it was in 2008. Oh and current in the MLS for 21 days. 21 days and you still haven’t put it in CSS or removed that from the listing? Wow.

The pictures are awful, photos of things like stacks of books and messy bedrooms. And of course no room dimensions either. This agent who cannot fathom what his showing instructions are? 100 listings? No, two active and 4 under contract. Not exactly mind numbing. And also, giving 1/2 hour notice is not rude or crazy, agents do it all the time.

Why do owners hire these agents? And furthermore, why do agents who care so little about actually selling houses go into real estate? And lastly, other then venting on this blog, what can we do about it?