Don’t shoot the messenger!

By Joel Persinger, GRI
YourRealEstateDude

Real estate is the only industry I know of in which the service provider is expected to provide hard work and professional advice without any guarantee of payment. When you visit your doctor to get a diagnosis, you are expected to work out paying the bill ahead of time. When you visit your attorney, you provide a retainer and sign a fee agreement before he spends more than the customary first consultation with you. Your tax adviser is the same. If you want your tax returns after he’s prepared them, you had better bust out your check book and start writing.

Your attorney, doctor and CPA will all happily give you the straight honest facts even if you don’t like them. After all, that’s what you paid them for and you have paid them. Your real estate agent, on the other hand, hasn’t been paid and won’t be unless you buy or sell the property. Anywhere along the way, if he tells you something you don’t like there’s a good chance that you can fire him without paying him a dime and hire another one. Many people do just that. The result being that the agent put forth time, money and effort and never got paid. Is it any wonder that many Realtors are afraid to tell their clients the plain, unvarnished truth?

I hear people complain about real estate agents all the time. They complain that agents make too much, work too little or simply can’t be trusted. No matter the reason why their house didn’t sell or their purchase fell apart it always seems to be the agent’s doing. Often, when I am talking with someone who is passing along such laments, I find out that prior to hiring the agent about whom they are so eagerly complaining, they had employed another one but fired him when he told them something they didn’t like.

Any experienced Realtor will tell you that sellers don’t like to hear that their property isn’t worth what they think, and buyers don’t want their agents to tell them that using a risky loan to buy a giant house they can’t afford is foolishness. Nevertheless, when the house doesn’t sell or the risky loan blows up in their faces, the first person to catch the blame is the Realtor. The simple truth is that people are all adults when they make crazy deals, but they’re all victimized children when the deals go wrong.

Over the last several years I have had many clients come to me with the desire to do very risky things. Hot real estate markets such as that which we had a few years ago will do that to people. They see dollar signs and lose all good sense. In each case, I gave them the straight truth and advised against taking such risks. I am glad to say that most took the advice to heart. Those who didn’t, fired me and hired someone who told them what they wanted to hear. Now that the market has changed dramatically, I’ll leave their current bad situations for you to imagine. I suspect that you won’t have to imagine very hard.

As your real estate dude I’m hear to remind you that your Realtor should be one of your trusted advisers whom you expect to give you straight forward, truthful advice regardless of whether it’s what you want to hear. When an experienced, professional Realtor tries to protect you by giving you advice even when you don’t want to hear it, he’s risking his job in the process. Such a person is a trustworthy advisor worthy of your respect and loyalty and his or her advice might just save your financial fanny. So, no matter how much the advice may run counter to your plans, listen, consider it carefully and please, no matter how tempting it might be, don’t shoot the messenger.