A real estate agent once told me that 20% of the agents make 80% of the money.  From what I have seen it has to be true.  I’ve had the pleasure to work with great agents, but these can be hard to find, so I’ve ended up having to deal with not so great agents.  It seems to me that many agents are just glorified order takers, which might have worked ok during the boom, but this tough market requires more aggressive marketing strategies.

What is amazing to me is that the mediocre agents continue to be well .. mediocre.  You would think that they would see the writing on the wall and take their game to a new level.    When will these people wake up and either find a new profession or improve?

Here’s what I have had to put up with:

• Inability to write decent copy. You would think they would mention that the property has a view, or is the lowest price in the subdivision.
• Not returning phone calls for days or checking email.
• Turning their cell phone off after 5pm and on weekends.
• Not very tech saavy – ie. they can’t figure out how to upload pictures to the internet.
• Listing an ad in a print publication and then not checking that the listing makes it to the online version.
• Taking the dart board approach to pricing. For example, not knowing their market and listing it too high, then incrementally lowering the price 5 or 10,000 per month.
• Not being able to answer the question: what sites will my property be listed on?
• Not being able to articulate their marketing plan.

Yes, I might be more focused on the internet and online marketing than others. But, hey wake up, it’s the way of the future! And where your prospective clients start their property search, why some agents seem to not understand that is beyond me.