Twice in the last 10 days I’ve had clients lose bids on houses without ever having the opportunity to know that there were competing bids on those houses. Twice. Have real estate agents forgotten how to work for their clients? Or are these agents simply selfish and lazy? What about the courtesy to other agents that brought them an offer.
One agent is a very well known Re/MAX agent here in town. On behalf of my client I submitted an offer on Friday afternoon and even called to let her know the offer was on the way. No response. On Monday about 11:00 I called and asked if she had received my offer since there was no response. Both times the I had to speak to voice mail because apparently answering the phone is not a high priority.
At 5:30 last evening I get a call (my first call from her, mind you) telling me my client’s offer was the losing offer. I asked her how many competing bids she had and why hadn’t I been informed that there were competing bids? She said two others and that my bid wouldn’t have won anyway. When pressed, I found out one other bid was a lowball and the one we lost to didn’t even come in until Sunday night. I again asked why we weren’t asked to give a highest and best and she said the other offer was cash so she was sure the offer of my client would be rejected.
Well, at least I feel more comfortable that she is now negotiating on behalf of her client.
Folks, I doubt seriously if my client’s offer was even really looked at by the seller. A very similar thing happened the week before with a Realty Executives agent. No announcement that there were multiple bids, just that we had lost.
Let me ask you: If you were a seller and could get into a multi-bid situation wherein you could quite probably get more out of the one buyer because of the second buyer, especially in a REO situation, wouldn’t you do it?
You know why the sellers don’t get our bids, too? Because I’ll bet you the agents are submitting just the top bid they collect. The listing agents of most REO listings are taking a commission cut to get the listings. They are not going to want to have to work that hard, just to keep the commissions coming in. 2% of $120,000 is enough. Why spend a couple more hours getting $125,000 when it only means another $60-$75 to the listing agent after office expenses.
I tell my kids one of the worst things I can call you is “Lazy.” Well, guess what…
So yesterday I get a call from a tenant that is something I’ve never heard before. And if you own and/or manage rental property, you know that is quite an accomplishment. Seems the tree out in front of the house is covered in bees! I asked “How many.”
In a rare act of cooperation a 
So as you can see St. Louis usually gets the better of things and native Kansas City Missourians have what you might call deep seeded reservations about the city to the east. Of course, me being from Kansas, I think it’s all really pretty funny. So in the end, that’s probably why Matt and I can get along.
Okay. So I told you the Missouri auditor had arrived. My sales files are all okay. My property management files, on the other hand, were a real headache. First, there was the comedy of errors. See, I use a professional software package for my property management (No, I’m not looking to manage more properties. Just mine and the five other doors I have is plenty, thank you.) and it has a lot of accounting practices contained therein. Problem is, neither I nor the auditor is an accountant.
You might say you’d have figured it out right away. And I probably should have. But with an auditor sitting there asking questions about a financial software program I use that I barely even understand (it just works!) I did get a little flustered. Which, is kinda funny really. I spent years in DC as a private investigator. I’ve been shot at. I’ve met Senators and Congressmen. I’ve testified in court so many times it’s not countable. Yet, here I was a little frustrated and nervous.
The Missouri auditor finally arrived to day. I’m nervous and relieved all at the same time. Just hoping all of our forms are approved and pass the mustard. Naturally, she wants a bank statement that hasn’t arrived yet so I’ll have to run up to the bank here in a few minutes to get it. If that’s all I have to do I’ll be happy.
Okay, so I admit it. I’m a closet Trekkie. No, I don’t own a Federation uniform. I’ve never been to a Star Trek convention. And I don’t currently own a set of blueprints to that beautiful bird the Enterprise. However, I do admit to having seen every episode of the original series far more than I’d like to count. I do have a Star Trek watch. And I scoff at the notion that Star Wars will ever be as cool or cutting edge as Star Trek.
Let me get this straight, if we want to not save trees by going paperless we need to use even more paper and electricity? Let’s call it what it is…You want to save the money. It makes more sense for an individual realtor to hit print on his email and expend the $0.10 in paper and electricity (because we’ll need that receipt for our taxes) than it does for KCRAR to continue to foot thousands for the expense. I get it. JUST QUIT CALLING IT “GOING GREEN!”
BBQ Capital | Kansas City Real Estate Investing 