Are all REAs lazy arse?

[Glen]

I would've enquired to at least a dozen property ads listed from agents in less than a week, and how many replies do you think that I have had?.......well,......one half on to it,... ...and two halfwits! i.e. 3 basic replies!?

No other info whatsoever!

First off, most of the initial advertising for these properties is complete shite (what are the vendors thinking???), and then IF you do manage to squeeze a reply from these morons, it's a basic reply with still no facts, photos, info etc that was asked for in the enquiring email!
Do they not want to do all that they can in selling this property?

In my opinion they make things harder for themselves, harder for a buyer, and certainaly no favours to the vendor that supposed to be working for!

Does anyone else find these problems with enquiring about properties listed by agents?...or are they all mostly lazy?

[whitt]

I used to get success rates like this some time ago.

With the decline in the market I would expect the rate to increase at some point in time.

[ream]

Are they a range of agencies Glen, eg 1% to the big blue ones? Or all the cheapies?

[Glen]

Across the board ream, they all seem as useless as a wet flannel!

[AndrewK]

I would've enquired to at least a dozen property ads listed from agents in less than a week, and how many replies do you think that I have had?.......well,......one half on to it,... ...and two halfwits! i.e. 3 basic replies!?

No other info whatsoever!

First off, most of the initial advertising for these properties is complete shite (what are the vendors thinking???), and then IF you do manage to squeeze a reply from these morons, it's a basic reply with still no facts, photos, info etc that was asked for in the enquiring email!
Do they not want to do all that they can in selling this property?

In my opinion they make things harder for themselves, harder for a buyer, and certainaly no favours to the vendor that supposed to be working for!

Does anyone else find these problems with enquiring about properties listed by agents?...or are they all mostly lazy?

I think the problem is that alot of real estate agents wouldnt know what an email was if it slapped them in the face, they are used to being able to pick and choose in the sellers market because you had to do things there way to get the property. as time goes on over the next year im sure plenty will ge tmore desperate and resort to upskilling themselves so they are capable of using such high tech things as email

[Davo36]

I find if I email agents I usually don't hear back. They use the phone mostly.

They should be much more onto it. They need all the purchasers they can get at the moment.

David

[Glen]

I find if I email agents I usually don't hear back. They use the phone mostly.

They should be much more onto it. They need all the purchasers they can get at the moment.

David

They won't even use the phone though!

I give clear instructions on what i'm after, and leave ALL my contact details, but still no success.

I can't see how hard it would be to set up their advertising with more than enough photos than required, and the same with all info on the property, including current rent takes etc, and as much other information as they can get their hands on!

Direct their marketing to the audience required.

It all makes for more interest and more confidence!

They need to get off their bottoms and work it harder! (as a vendor I wouldn't be happy with the general performance!)

[xris]

I agree with davo that emails are a problem with agents. To defend a salesman for a moment, sometimes the problem is with the agent (the office) which is not correctly set up to deal with email enquiries. The salesperson then has a huge task messing around just to reply and organise the messages.

xris

[ladyagent]

Don't email.... ring the salesperson up!The personal approach is by far the best.Whilst I always reply to emails, and promptly, it is fair to say that many emails are from time waisting dreamers.I know that when somebody takes the trouble to ring me, they are genuinely interested in a particular property or category of properties,and not just an internet sifter.Get personal, strike up a business relationship with salespeople.Find the ones you can trust and feel comfortable with, who know the market and your requirements and limitations.Discard the lazy ones.

[mlkmnz]

Don't email.... ring the salesperson up!The personal approach is by far the best.Whilst I always reply to emails, and promptly, it is fair to say that many emails are from time waisting dreamers.

Let me guess, you put "serious buyers only" in your ads

[Davo36]

They won't even use the phone though!

I give clear instructions on what i'm after, and leave ALL my contact details, but still no success.

I can't see how hard it would be to set up their advertising with more than enough photos than required, and the same with all info on the property, including current rent takes etc, and as much other information as they can get their hands on!

Direct their marketing to the audience required.

It all makes for more interest and more confidence!

They need to get off their bottoms and work it harder! (as a vendor I wouldn't be happy with the general performance!)

Glen perhaps the problem is with you or what you say you want.

What are you telling them you want? Really cheap properties? To buy at a big discount? They're working for the vendor and purchasers who will buy at a really low price are a dime a dozen. They don't need more of those.

Also, re them not posting ALL the pictures or ALL the info about a property: Well this is called marketing. The idea is to provide enough information so that the phone will ring and the interested party will ask some questions about aspects of the property not fully disclosed. If you show 100% of the info on a property, people will find some reason to discount it and move on.

It's a funny thing that when people are searching for properties, they actually look for a reason to skip them. So as they go down the ads in the paper or thru the ads on a website, they're kind of going "Ummm, nope, ummm nope..." and so on.

And so what agents started doing some time ago was removing the price. Because if say you want to spend up to $400k, and every property had a price attached, you would quickly jump over the ones above $400k (even though you may have been able to buy at $400k or below). So that would result in a certain number of buyers automatically rejecting a property. But if there's no price, or there's a range, or a low CV figure quoted, then you can't instantly disregard the property and move on, so maybe you ring up about it or go along to an open home to have a look... and this is what they want! Maybe when you get there you'll see it's quite a good property or if you're an owner occupier maybe you'll even fall in love with it! And that's what the agents really really want!

This is of course really annoying when you want to find a place and you have to enquire about heaps of properties and the agents are purposely really vague about price. It takes way more time and is just a pain in the arse. And so now the market has changed, this no-pricing is changing too. I've noticed much more property is being marketed with a price.

So coming back to the original point I was trying to make, they purposely don't give you all the info so that you have to ring them up (emailing's just lazy on your part dude) and they get to find out who you are and they get to SELL the property to you. The MARKETING is what gets the phone to ring or to get people along to an open home etc. The SELLING is what they do once they have you on the phone or in front of them.

Selling real estate is not as simple as just placing ads with lots of info in the paper or on a website.

Does this make sense?

David

[AndrewK]

Don't email.... ring the salesperson up!The personal approach is by far the best.Whilst I always reply to emails, and promptly, it is fair to say that many emails are from time waisting dreamers.I know that when somebody takes the trouble to ring me, they are genuinely interested in a particular property or category of properties,and not just an internet sifter.Get personal, strike up a business relationship with salespeople.Find the ones you can trust and feel comfortable with, who know the market and your requirements and limitations.Discard the lazy ones.

Yes but the agents i want to deal with must be good at using email therefore i will always get in touch with an agent via email first in most situations and if they reply i will go from there and if not i will discard them

[Aston]

And so what agents started doing some time ago was removing the price. Because if say you want to spend up to $400k, and every property had a price attached, you would quickly jump over the ones above $400k

I personally will not reply to a property advertisement without a price attached to it and I make a point of telling agents this. Generally the agent's reponse to me is that I may be missing out on a good buy.

No..... they are missing out on a sale.

[mlkmnz]

I personally will not reply to a property advertisement wihtout a price attached to it and I make a point of telling agents this. Generally the agent's reponse to me is that I may be missing out on a good buy.

No..... they are missing out on a sale.

And we're one of the only countries that has this carryon at such a huge level.

Imagine going to the dairy, asking how much the milk is, and being told "I don't know, what do you think it's value is?"

[Aston]

Yes but the agents i want to deal with must be good at using email therefore i will always get in touch with an agent via email first in most situations and if they reply i will go from there and if not i will discard them

I agree with this also.

I use email a lot and will not bother to go back to the agent if he/she doesn't reply. I mention this to agents and have discovered that some agents don't even know how to email. The responsibility with this belongs to the Manager of the Company they work for, if they can't email then they need professional development.