Mean People Suck

There are somewhere between seven and ten thousand real estate agents in Pinellas County, and like a good little Bell Curve, eighty percent of the business goes to twenty percent of the agents. With so many realtors available, most folks choose someone they already know when looking for help buying or selling a house. That makes it even more challenging when you’re trying to expand your business beyond your personal sphere. But in order to close transactions regularly enough so you can pay your bills, most of us need to move out of our comfort zone and work with complete strangers.

With so many other realtors in the county, I’ve discovered a hard truth: When a stranger who lives here comes to you looking for help, it’s often because she has alienated the real estate agents she already knows. Working with her is going to be a challenge, and you might not even see any money for your troubles.

While my biggest transaction to date came from someone I met on NextDoor (who told me her last agent was horrible—warning bells!—but turned out to be a sweetheart), here are some quick anecdotes about some of the lovely people I’ve been lucky enough to meet while trying to expand my business….

--A woman DM’d me on NextDoor after I posted about real estate, wanting a listing appointment. I got back to her immediately with some questions about the property and trying to nail down a time for the appointment. An hour later she said she already had 4 appointments set up and I had been too hard to get a hold of. But I responded immediately to your first text, I thought to myself. I sent an understanding reply, saying that I’d been in other appointments but of course everyone wanted to be the first priority of the person you’re hiring. She exploded at me, accusing me of calling her a spoiled brat and telling me she was blocking my number. Now I keep a careful eye on postings on NextDoor, worried that she’ll make up a reason to attack me in public!

-- A woman I’d met through a referral service had me take her out several times to see properties. On our third trip, she brought her dog, saying she felt guilty leaving him home alone. I told her that since every home we were seeing had a dog on the premises, the dog would need to stay in the car. She sulked and pouted and the next day texted me that “my services were no longer needed.”

-- A man I’d met through that same referral service had a strict limit of $125K. He wanted a single family home in St. Petersburg. There are very few homes available in that price range, and the ones that are available are not dream homes. But all this guy did was bitch and moan at every house I showed him. Why was there rotting wood around the door? Why was this window pane cracked? Why hadn’t the homeowner fixed every little problem before putting his home on the market? When I explained the concept of the “fixer-upper” and the price range he was looking in, he got angry. After two separate showing trips, I never heard from him again.

-- A woman who’d emailed me through the company website, asking for help buying a For Sale By Owner. After I took her to the house and went over the timeline for an offer and sale, the owner called me a few hours later. My client had called her directly, wanting to do the deal on their own and cut me out completely. (Because I’d had the owner sign an agreement before the showing, she couldn’t do it.) When I tried to call the client, she blocked me.

--A woman I’d connected with through another referral service who was dying to see a property north of Clearwater. She insisted she was a cash buyer and ready to make an offer. It was a good price, so I made the appointment and drove the 40 miles to meet her. She never showed and never returned my calls or texts.

--A buyer who called me from the sign on my listing wanted to buy a beach house on St. Pete Beach. I showed him my listing; it wasn’t right for him but he was committed to being on the island. I did all the research he asked for, showed him other listings, analyzed the pricing of homes he was interested in. After spending hours and hours on this gentleman, he emailed me to say that my research had convinced him that “St. Pete Beach isn’t where I want to be!” I never heard from him again.

-- In 2014, a man emailed me wanting to sell his property. He was in Europe and the property was near Madeira Beach. I spent several hours with my broker, coming up with the pricing analysis. Did not hear back. Two years later, he emailed me again. Now he had two properties on the street and wanted to buy a third. There was one on the market! What did he want to offer? Crickets. Last month he emailed me again, wanting to sell those two properties again. Or build on it. Or whatever. I sent him the info he wanted. Again, crickets…

The worst story isn’t even mine. A good friend found a client through the referral system. He started bitching to her about how he was frustrated because he was in a sexless marriage and he really needed a BJ. And she didn’t fire him because she needed the work!

I could go on and on, not only with real estate stories, but also the jerks I deal with at my other job doing roofing sales, even as far back as when I worked the counter at McDonald’s in the 1980s. The broader issue, I think, is that people sometimes see folks who work in retail or sales as their job, and not as a person doing a job. It’s okay to treat them without respect or concern because a job isn’t human, it’s a thing.

These experiences serve as a reminder to me why I prefer to work with friends and direct referrals over strangers. But it also reminds me that when I’m interacting with strangers on the job—the call center worker helping me after my order was messed up; the repair person who’s the third guy to try to fix the problem—that these are real people who (usually) are just trying to do their best.

Usually.