As for:

Gone, too, is the lady with the Big Hair, styled with a blow torch in the Alfalfa fashion.

I can only say that these cadillac driving, chain smoking, non-stop talking dinosaurs are leaving us as the years go by and they pass on. Too bad really. They were always a source of humor for me.

For me, it continues to defy logic. So many choices, yet so little apparent deliberation. Why would anyone settle for mediocrity? (And, I am being generous here). That was rhetorical, of course. Tomorrow morning I will undoubtedly wake up to three more homes listed by Bob’s Realty, Mortgage and Mattress, and the sellers will have an unpleasant experience yet blame the market or the industry. Sigh…

“I don’t just sell homes. I market them!”

Ummmm … just a hunch, but most sellers probably couldn’t give a fig if the home is marketed as long as the bloody thing sells.

I’m documenting horrible and I mean horrible realtor photos everyday. Sheer madness.

I think people just pick the first agent they meet 90% of the time.

-Athol

You make a point which for years bugged me into Darth BawldGuy territory at times.
Maybe it makes us crazy because, as you point out, it just doesn’t make sense - even giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s how it sometimes shows itself in my world.

A couple for whom I’d taken from well under $100K to a net worth requiring two, count ‘em, two commas, decided a few years ago they could continue the trend line without me. After all, they’d been watching me make them rich for three years, right? Their reasoning was that I’d changed my mind about putting an office in Arizona, and they wanted their agent to, as they put it, ‘have a presence’ there. Never mind the fact I did more business there than 80% of the agents there.

To make a long story short, they now own about $5Mil in property there that is the sort I avoided like the plague. While my other exchange clients from San Diego were busy watching their Arizona properties zoom up like the Arizona temperature gage in August, these guys were dealing with little or no rise in value, bad tenants, massive vacancies, and by the way, an agent who apparently ripped them off with several ‘great fixers’. Turns out he was also a contractor who could give them a ‘deal’.

This move has cost them $1.5Mil in lost capital growth. It has cost them another $1Mil in capital growth they’ve not enjoyed in a different growth region they could’ve traded into but for their poorly selected properties.

They called me back about a year ago, asking me to please fix everything. They ‘made a mistake’ and couldn’t do what I do.

Imagine that.

I feel your pain Kris. This is one of my favorite posts this year.