Can You Say, “No Boundaries?”
How about, “Unprofessional?”
To reduce stress and temper the disappointment of lower sale prices ” and also to keep clients from dropping them for another agent partway through a seemingly endless sales process ” some brokers are significantly expanding their job descriptions.
Beyond rearranging furniture and decluttering, they take on jobs like plant watering, bed making and floor scrubbing; they check on homes when the owners are out of town; and sometimes even apply a coat of sealer to the driveway or do real estate-related paperwork.
During the two years that their two-bedroom Glen Cove colonial was on the market, Jenna Caggiano and Rich Peck would often return home after yet another real estate open house to find dinner ready. Their brokers ” Natalie C. McCray and Eileen B. Heimer of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty ” had cooked it during the event, between visits from potential buyers.
–Marcelle Fischler, “A Little Alfredo With That Listing?”; The New York Times (11/27/09)
Would you expect a lawyer handling an especially drawn-out case for you to start repairing things around your home?
How about your doctor cooking you meals — elaborate meals, yet — if your illness lingered?
Apparently, there are some Realtors who think that their job duties include helping clients run their households if the listing doesn’t sell.
What exactly are these Realtor-Servants thinking??
“With all the things I have done for them, they stay with me. They will re-sign,” said one agent interviewed for the article.
Job Confusion
That would make perfect sense — if the object were to simply accumulate as many listings as possible, or to re-sign clients in perpetuity.
In fact, the Realtor’s job is to sell their client’s home (or at least procure an offer).
If a home has been on the market for an extended time, even in a soft market, one (or both) of the following is likely true: 1) the home is mispriced; 2) the home is poorly staged and marketed.
The antidote to #1 is a more realistic price; #2, another Realtor.
Realtor-performed household chores isn’t one of the choices.
