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ABC News Good Morning America and a Sacramento REALTOR
A producer from ABC News Good Morning America called yesterday to talk about the hatchet job from Consumer Reports last month: Real Estate Agents Confess Their Dirty Little Secrets. With a headline like that, whose eyeballs would wander elsewhere when those eyeballs can fall upon real estate porn? How stupid does Consumer Reports think its subscribers are? Oh, wait. Consumer Reports just told you.
This producer said she was having difficulty finding real estate agents to appear on the show to back-up the silly-ass headline grabber punched out by Consumer Reports. She said ABC News Good Morning America offered to film real estate agents in the shadows, anonymously, but nobody was jumping at the opportunity. No shit, Sherlock. Agents won’t do it because first of all, the “facts” are not true, second the statements are the results of a tiny sampling of agents, which stated they once witnessed or heard of another agent doing (nothing first hand) and, third, agents crave publicity, for crying out loud. Real estate agents are publicity hounds.
I wouldn’t go so far as to propose that agents might pull that “Jimmy McGill publicity stunt” as in episode 104 on Better Call Saul — faking a guy falling off a billboard so Jimmy could come to the rescue — but agents are not above standing on a street corner dressed like a clown and waving a Sacramento homes for sale sign if they thought it would bring in the business.
The crap that Consumer Reports spewed forth was stuff that probably grew out of a committee meeting with everybody slouched around a conference table, munching on stale doughnuts. What crappy things do you think agents do, one of the suits asked. I think they tell sellers to sell for too little and they make buyers pay too much, answered some minion who, because he overslept, arrived with his shirt on backwards.
That kind of nonsense is idiotic. We live in a fast-paced digital world, and market movement tends to dictate. No agent cares about squeezing a client because clients can’t be squeezed.
I would be remiss if I didn’t note how quickly my husband zeroed in on the story when I shared it with him last night. A large grin crossed his face. He offered up the reason I am willing to help out ABC News Good Morning America. It’s because I live very close to an ABC affiliate, Channel 10, so I could dash over to Broadway in an instant to be filmed for the Good Morning America via satellite — which would give me access to that damn inaccessible and private Ingress portal. Yes, I could claim the portal, deploy all of my resonators, set up my mods and walk out of that Channel 10 studio a satisfied Sacramento Realtor.
Don’t Look for Answers About Agents in Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports says it interviewed 303 real estate agents . . . and 86% of those agents said real estate agents are out to screw you and are dishonest. Now, it could be the manner in which Consumer Reports phrased the questions or it could be that they are talking only to the dishonest agents or maybe the cross section is skewed. Whatever, this Sacramento REALTOR aligns herself within the minority — the meager 42 agents of those surveyed who believe agents want to do the best job possible.
They couldn’t have tried to trash an industry any better than the March issue of Consumer Reports. It seems to me that they didn’t interview enough people. The numbers are off. They say buyers care more about interest rates than buying a home because they got married or they need more space. Wha? They say an agent’s median fee is 4.2%, which might apply to a tiny real estate market in Idaho somewhere but certainly is way off in other markets.
If you ask Consumer Reports, it will tell you that they pulled the stats from real estate agents, not outta their butts. Below is their claim:
- Agents will steer buyers to homes yielding higher commissions: 32%
- Agents make exaggerated claims when marketing themselves: 30%
- Agents refuse to disclose structural problems: 26%
- Agents persuade sellers to sell for less than their homes are worth: 27%
The only thing they got right was when is the best time of the year to sell, which is April. They neglect to point out that homes selling in April tend to close in May. I wonder if they talked to any experienced real estate agents at all or just those with their feet up on the desk watching the homeless sleep in the park.
Who among us hasn’t thought at one time or another to lie, or hasn’t been tempted under certain circumstances to bend the truth? Would an agent lie? It’s normal to consider. The fact is most of us would not do it. Like last week I discovered a referral had closed escrow and the company that had referred the buyer to us was not paid. I use a tight system to track buyers but this one had slipped through, with the buyer’s agent forgetting to source the lead.
I looked at the buyer’s name. The name given to us by the referral company was slightly different than the name that had closed escrow. In fact, the referral company most likely would never track this referral. I could have just left it lie. Forgotten about it. Nobody would know. The thing is I would know. And I do know. And I agreed to pay that company, and that company should be paid, even after the fact. So, I contacted the referral company and arranged for payment. Also, fixed a hole in my referral business tracking so this kind of thing doesn’t occur a second time.
I believe that most agents are honest and ethical, and they would do the same thing under similar circumstances. But when a company is out to provide “insider advice,” sometimes the only way to do that is to paint an entire industry with a tainted brush and proclaim that everybody is a crook — create a little hysteria, even if the facts are wrong.
The real estate industry is such an easy target. We walk around with a bullseye drawn on our foreheads. I’m not sure Consumer Reports could recognize a real estate pro, though, if they found one. It’s a sorry day when we can’t even rely on Consumer Reports to get the facts straight.
