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Difficulties in Home buying process

buyhome
14 years ago

Hi,

I am doing a group project in management class. We are trying to improve the home buying process and are looking for answers to following questions:

What are the difficulties that buyers face while working with the realtor in process of buying a home?

What are their expectation from the realtor?

Comments (5)

  • qdwag
    14 years ago

    1)that some realtors DON'T listen!!! When i say i am not interested in a specific type home or location of a home, it means i am NOT interested...More times then i care to remember my realtor pulled into a driveway with a home i had no interest in.."Oh, i thought you might like it" or "The price is right"..

    2) going foward,with the power of the internet and the information i can get, the realtor for me, is a door opener, the gate keeper to homes i want to see...

  • stapleface
    14 years ago

    I had no issues at all with my realtor during my recent property search, he was fantastic at listening to our needs. He found a house that wasn't in our target neighborhood, but asked us about it before we went to see it. That was the house we ended up putting an offer on.
    As for question #2, it is pretty similar as to what was stated above. I knew what I was looking for, I needed the realtor for access to the property.

  • Carol_from_ny
    14 years ago

    Agents that don't listen are number one. I've fired a few for that very reason. I know what I want. I have a list it's in order as to priority. They have my price range which has not been unreasonable in any of the markets we've bought in and yet they are unable to show me what I know is available because they think they know better than me what I would want.

    Agents that don't return calls in a prompt manner or follow thru with things as they promise.

    Most of our problems when buying haven't been with the agent as much as it's been with getting GOOD inspections done by reliable people in a timely manner. OR getting the banks to do their job. I can't tell you how many times we've gone into a closing and paperwork has been missing or the numbers have been WRONG!
    Fortunately for us DH is very good with numbers and he's caught several thousands of dollars of STUPID math mistakes in the closing process.

  • deanie1
    14 years ago

    I've only worked with one buyer agent and he was absolutely terrible. Number one was that he kept trying to talk me into buying this one house as if he were working for the sellers. I wanted to scream "You are supposed to be working in MY best interest, not theirs!" He minimized every concern I had and did a lousy, lazy negotiating job. He never had the paperwork right and left the contract full of loopholes that the sellers used against us. I ended up buying the house, but fired him and hired someone else to help me sell my other house a couple months later. So, yeah, he won the battle but lost the war.

    Secondly, we had a bad home inspection -- inspector came highly recommended to us (by the bad realtor, but I didn't know he was that bad at the time) but he missed key malfunctions and said some stuff was broke when it wasn't.

    My expectations for my buyer agent was that he'd help us get a good deal and help us with the paperwork. But in the end he didn't care what we wanted; I think he had his own agenda, knew this was our first buying experience, and took the lazy way out just doing what was easiest for him thinking we'd never know the difference. We wised up eventually!

  • logic
    14 years ago

    I'd say that all too many REA's just have their eye solely upon closing the deal to the exclusion of all else, and therefore build their entire SOP on gaining that end, to the exclusion of what is truly in the buyers best interest.

    This is why all too often the buyer is not told what he should be told, is referred to various legal and/or inspection "professionals" who are anything but, and usually have to perform most of the legwork and research on their own.

    Most buyers complain about being pressured by their REA, about REA's giving legal advice that they are not qualified to give, about their REA playing down negative findings during the various inspection processes, being pressured about giving the REA the inspection reports, and about having to spend a lot of money on inspections to then find out that improvements, additions, etc were all performed illegally, without permits.

    Most buyers are usually very surprised the find that the REA never bothered to research as to whether or not the property was legally what they were selling it to be...such as a three bedroom that is legally only a two bedroom, etc.

    While this is not true of all REA's, as there are many who do not fit the above description, it seems that they are in the minority, and unfortunately get painted with the same brush of their less than stellar associates.

    IMO, I think most buyers would gladly eliminate the REA from the process entirely if they did not need them for their MLS listing access.