Palos Verdes Real Estate

Why other agents don’t do the extras . . . that I do

If you read my stuff, you know that I regularly do a lot of extra things for my clients that other agents wouldn’t think of doing.  Things like plumbing, roof, or electrical repairs, fixing windows, fixing clocks, selling cars, shopping for loans — the list is too long to recite here or even recall.  I’m a reasonably handy guy, and so it just makes sense to me to make the repairs I can, rather than call someone in who will charge you a couple hundred dollars to do it.  I was recently interviewed on this subject.  Other than the obvious advantage to you of not having to pay someone, having an agent knowledgeable in the area of repairs and how things work can pay off when we get that request for a credit of $5000.00 for something that I could probably fix myself in an hour.  Buyers (and their agents) often don’t know how much things cost to get fixed, and tend to err on the high side when requesting a credit in lieu of repairs.  If I can’t do it myself, I have excellent, reasonably-priced people who can, and who I will arrange to look at the work.

So why don’t other agents get involved in this?  After 31 years in the business, this is why I think it is:

1)  They don’t know how.  This eliminates all reasons below, which are predicated on the assumption that the agent has the ability to do it.  Most agents just don’t have a butane torch or volt meter handy, and probably wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did.  I don’t intend to be demeaning — it’s just true.

2)  They don’t want the liability.  These days, many agents conduct their business in constant fear of lawsuits.  In this regard, Prudential used to go nuts at some of the things I do.  They go less nuts now that they’ve figured out that I generally don’t take on something I can’t handle (I’m not going to remodel your kitchen or re-roof your house).  But the Prudential corporate attorney still has palpitations at many of the things I’ve done and do.

3)  It’s not their job.  They’re right.  Technically, an agent has earned his commission when he introduces the buyer and seller, period.  Hard to believe, but true.  Even for the rare agent who has the ability to do the above sort of stuff, this is often a convenient excuse for not doing it, as it allows more time to “chase new deals” rather than crawling around under your house.

4)  It’s not appreciated.  Even if the agent does a bunch of extra stuff, the client may not appreciate it, generally because the client doesn’t buy or sell often enough to have perspective or remember what agents normally do.  Agent’s attitude is that if they’re not going to get anything out of it, they’re not going to do it.

So, given all that, why would I ever get that involved?  After all, all of the above could also apply to me.  It comes back to the reason I got into this business in 1984 in the first place, which was to be the kind of agent I wished I could have found.  I do the above sort of stuff because I just think an agent should be willing and able to do it.  While I didn’t expect my agent to take off her heels and crawl around the attic, I did assume some minimum knowledge of construction, loans, contracts, etc.  #2 above is the reason most agents don’t get too deeply into anything not strictly within their job description:  if anything should go awry and the buyer’s attorney can prove that your agent did anything extra, no matter how irrelevant to the matter in question, the agent is afraid they’ll be toast.  I’m prepared to take that risk.

Give me a call at 310 613-1076 to see what I can do for you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 17th, 2013 at 7:43 am and is filed under Buyers, Everything I've Written, Real Estate General Info, Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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