Real Estate Agents Can Be the Worst Humans in the World
I bet you can relate to what I’m about to share
Real estate agents are the rats of this world.
They feed off the pain of innocent people trying to survive. In Australia, they’re even cockier. You’re about to learn why.
It’s important you understand the perils of the typical real estate agent, so you don’t accidentally become one of these horrible human beings with their terrible character traits.
Blatant forgery
It’s been a while since I dealt with a real estate agent.
Recently, my wife and I decided to move home 1) our apartment is too small 2) the neighbor's party the night away until after midnight on a Monday 3) 50% of our apartment block has coroni-macaroni so our chance of getting sick is high.
To cut to the chase we decided to rent a new place that’s a standalone townhouse (shack). We found one. We promptly put in an application.
The phone call comes through and the real estate agent says, “Great news we’ve accepted your application.” We both do our best Cheshire cat grin. An hour later the paperwork comes through.
Smiles turn to tears.
I filled out the application for a 6-month lease with a start date of 4 weeks. That gives us the 30 days notice we need to give our current landlord.
The paperwork has a start date of 2 weeks. The length of the lease is 1 year, not 6 months. I ring the real estate agent expecting it’s an innocent mistake.
“No, that’s what you filled out on the application. Do you, like, know, like, how busy we are? You’ve got three hours or we’re giving the property to one of the other applicants.”
I’m pissed. 12 months isn’t going to work. But I’m no dumb f*ck.
The real estate agent uses third-party software to collect the rental application information. I try to ring them. They don’t have a phone number for tenants. I find a number of real estate agents who can call for support with the software. I ring it. I pretend to be a slimy real estate agent.
“Where do I go to find the original data the tenant enters? Can tenants access this information?”
It turns out once you fill out the details only the real estate agent gets a copy. The tenant gets nothing. Illegal according to contract law.
Here’s where it gets bad.
I keep talking to the software company. I get lucky. The woman on the phone figures out I’m not a real estate agent. But she has quit her job and only has two days left, so she decides to help me cause she’s got nothing to lose.
In her system, it shows that I actually did write 6 months, not 12. She tells me that the real estate agent has gone in and changed the details. Forgery.
I get excited. A win against an industry I hate! Y-e-a-h-h-h-h!
I celebrate too early. My wife lets me know that this real estate firm looks after all the properties in the area we want to live. If I expose her forgery then we won’t be able to apply for other properties. I’m stuck.
In the end, I’m forced to sign the lease with the two details the agent forged.
Scum. Rat. Vermin.
They only look short term
Australia, where I live, is still in the middle of a 30-year real estate boom. Even the 2008 financial crisis did nothing to us.
As a result, real estate agents have become some of the cockiest humans in Australia. Through sheer luck — not intelligence — many of them have made fortunes by simply being in the right place at the right time.
The real estate agent that forged my paperwork kept telling me “We’re run off our feet. Prices keep going sky-high. If you wait around too long you lose.”
I couldn’t resist.
“Most of my career has been in banking. I’ve analyzed the financial data of the last 2 years. The pandemic has meant that many Australians can’t pay their business/home loans. Pauses on these loans got enforced by the government. Even now they’ve got lifted, banks aren’t taking customers off pause. This has created built-up systemic risk in the local and international financial system.”
I continue…
“At some point, the debt will have to be repaid. That’s what will create a liquidity event where a higher number of people than normal will need to exit through the fire doors. If too many people do this at the same it leads to panic.
Panic leads to irrational behavior. That behavior can lead to deep recessions and even great depressions. So in the short term, everything is fine. At some point, the risk in the system will need to get let out. That’s why I’m optimistically cautious about real estate and don’t want a long lease.”
She didn’t like my response.
“Yes, but my phone won’t stop ringing.”
Like I said, short-term thinking. Monkey see monkey do the behavior. Always think long-term, otherwise, you’ll get wiped out by a rogue financial tidal wave.
The fake friend calls nobody falls for
Sometimes real estate agents call me for a fake friend chat. It starts with odd questions like “How’s your wife?” and “Where did you go for holidays?”
You can tell they don’t care about the answer. How?
They’re typing loudly on their keyboard while you talk. The call quickly accelerates beyond small talk to “Hey, so when are you looking to buy a property?” When I politely tell them to go away they start talking about the great opportunity that is real estate investment.
They forget that being a landlord involves being a hotel manager to a bunch of drunken strangers.
- Whenever something breaks, you pay.
- Whenever they have a bad day, you get a call about it.
- Whenever the noise is too loud for their fragile ears, you hear about it.
Landlords are punching bags.
Now, you do get some nice perks, like a rental yield, so it’s not all for nothing. My only problem is after all the middlemen erode away the rent you collect, what’s leftover isn’t much. Then you’ve got to pay tax. Oh, and inflation and money created out of thin air by governments further devalue the money.
Simple math: you make 4% rental yield after everything. The current inflation in America is 7%. See? You’re basically a debt jockey for a bank.
I know real estate has advantages and it’s not all bad. That’s not my problem. It’s that the true reality of real estate investing is completely lost. I blame greedy real estate agents who spread these toxic lies for commissions.
We all gotta eat, I get it. But you don’t need to feed people rat poison.
The nightmare of the oversell
Ever had a real estate agent describe property to you?
“These white walls are all the rage. Every visitor we’ve had raves about them. I get people sending me emails a year later to tell me how they remember those famous white plaster walls.”
It’s all hype. They can make a glass of water sound like a 200-year-old wine. ‘Gift of the gab’ they call it. I call it blatant bullsh*t.
There’s a beautiful art called telling it how it is. There are enough sugar coaters in the world already.
If you want to get another perspective on how they oversell, I dare you to watch a show on Amazon Prime called Luxe Listings. Here’s a 2-minute sample. You’ll vomit in your mouth. The egos and arrogance amongst real estate agents are next levels.
If only they knew…
The ego is the enemy of the endlessly abundant good life.
Your signature is a one-night stand
The worst feeling is after you sign the contract to buy or rent a property.
There’s zero customer service. They’re nowhere to be seen. In my case, I got the ultimate sign of arrogance.
“Call my assistant as I don’t deal with the details.”
You feel used and abused the way you might after you have a one-night stand with a man/woman you met in a nightclub after one too many tequilas.
I find the assistants to these real estate agents are actually smarter and better at their job than their slave masters.
They get worked to the bone though. I feel sorry for them. But they know what matters. They’re never too busy or important to ring the landlord or the owner of the property you want to buy to get answers to questions.
They get one thing: choosing real estate is one of the biggest and most stressful things you will ever do.
If assistants of real estate agents run the world, it would be a much better place.
Pro tip: give the assistants excellent online reviews. It helps them a lot and they deserve it.
Closing thought
It’s possible I’m just unlucky. That after decades of being around real estate agents I’ve simply met the bad eggs.
I don’t think so.
The online review sites are littered with the carnage left behind by the arrogance of the real estate industry.
It still may be boom times for them. But all booms turn to busts eventually. That’s when egos and arrogance get reset. It’s probably the only good thing about a deep recession.
Be careful when you deal with real estate agents. They can ruin one of the biggest decisions of your life. Assume they’re lying about everything to get a sales commission because they probably are.
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