Thursday, October 05, 2006

Adventures in Homebuying: The Realtor

Because I'm enrolled in some special thingie from a specific real estate company (that will pay a couple grand at closing), one of the requirements was for me to use an agent from their company. Today, the woman from the program gave my number to a local realtor, who called me this morning after I overslept and missed breakfast with Paul (who was reduced to a sausage biscuit at Burger King due to my oversight...oops!).

Rosie the Realtor calls and we discuss what I want in a house. My needs are simple: quiet neighborhood, no shootings, with a yard. More than one bathroom and two-car garage a plus.

"I know exactly where to take you," she chirps brightly. "Raytown!"

What. The. Hell.

Apparently, she deals heavily in the Eastern Jackson county area. She blathers on about the buttload of houses for sale (I can't imagine why). Two car garage? Not likely. Extra bathroom? Only if I am lucky. I made a few jokes, she didn't laugh...which leads me to think she has no sense of humor. Selling houses is serious business here!! Of all the realtors in the land, I get the one with no personality.

I have a very, very bad feeling about this.

But being the nice person I am, I went ahead to set up and appointment to see her as to not hurt her feelings. It's not like I had anything else going on that day. Maybe by seeing other houses, I can get a more concrete idea of what I want.

I can tell she's going to peg me as one of those "difficult buyers".

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely! Buying a house is the biggest purchase of your life (no pressure, huh? lol) It should be done with someone you like!

thedirtyknitter said...

Same here - our first agent on our first house was crap...and we paid for it...the second one we had - who worked with us for years (the first year - she told us we couldn't get what we wanted for the house we were living in and to wait a year or two then we could - total honesty. the 2nd year we went looking at houses with her for a few weeks - then i had a family emergency which took up months of our time - so she pretty much wasted her time w/ us but totally understood - the 3rd year - we looked at over 40 houses because she wanted us to be completely happy...and found our current home) She is the sweetest and sincerely honest w/ you about things. Can't ask for more than that when making that huge of a purchase. She seriously worked hard for us and after our first experience w/ realtors...we weren't expecting much.
Anyway - she works for Keller Williams - Julie Deppen
julie@kchomeconnection.com
...if you want to try someone else. Don't just be polite and stick w/ an agent you don't like. It's not worth it.
lyn
flowerparts@yahoo.com

Faith said...

"Difficult buyer" = "Smart buyer"

Believe me, the things I wish I'd known then...hind sight is always 20/20, though, right? You are absolutely right with the attitude that seeing more will help you narrow down to what you actually want.

Oh, and don't back down on the more than one bath thing. I HATE only having one bathroom, and look forward to at least having an extra half bath in our next house...