Buying a home should be an exciting time for shoppers, but incompetent realtors can ruin the experience in the blink of an eye. A scandal can leave long-lasting effects on home buyers that forever make them weary of the next realtor they shake hands with. Here, homeowners recall the one realtor that made them question doing business with them.
All stories have been edited for clarity.
“I Deserve To Get Paid Too”
“We were searching for our first house with a well-known local realtor. We quickly became frustrated because each showing after the next was nowhere near what we were looking for. The realtor kept insisting we check out more places, and we naively followed her advice.
All of the properties were under our bedroom and bathroom requirements or on the complete opposite end of the city that we were interested in. Even though the homes she showed us were terrible, the realtor made it clear she was annoyed that we didn’t like any of her suggestions. We told her over and over that the properties weren’t within the parameters of what we were looking to buy, but she wouldn’t listen.
After growing tired of the realtor, my girlfriend found a home for sale by the owner that we absolutely loved. We informed our realtor that we won’t be needing her services because of the lack of interest in properties she was showing and because we found a listing on our own.
The realtor’s attitude only got worse. After she heard the news, the realtor pressures us into allowing her to tag along.
‘I just want to see what you two managed to find on your own,’ the realtor said in a conniving tone.
My girlfriend and I ended up going through the offer process on our own. We attempted to talk the owners down, but when we weren’t successful, my girlfriend decided to give them a call. Once she got a hold of them, the owner informed us that they couldn’t go down any further because our realtor secretly had them sign a form that said they weren’t allowed to sell us the house without going through her.
I was furious!
I called the realtor and demanded to know what exactly gave her the right to pull such a stunt. Her response made me want to pull my hair out.
‘Well, I need to get paid, too.’
I wouldn’t have been as upset if she had actually been doing a decent job, but I had told her we didn’t want her services because she wasn’t giving us anything inside the parameters we set. We did all the work ourselves, yet she still wanted to be compensated. Her entitlement was absolutely absurd!
My girlfriend and I loved the house, so we knew we had to just deal with it. After some time, the owners moved out and ended up getting a realtor to help sell the house because it was taking too long. We had to take a plunge and pay ten thousand dollars more for it, including seller compensation for the realtor’s commission, because of the realtor ordeal delayed the process.
The realtor was really rude to us after we closed and said she expected us to find her three new clients in order for her business to continue. We told her it wasn’t going to happen. Needless to say, we will not be using her for anything or recommending her to anyone.
We’ve since had everyone tell us we should have pushed harder and never agreed to go with her to the crummy listings. We should have pushed back against the agreement she had the owners sign without our knowledge since she really had no part in our house buying other than showing up and watching us sign papers prepared by the title company we sought out and chose. We also realize now that part of the problem was the sellers agreeing to sign the form in the first place.”
Unwanted Visitor
“We had our old house on the market. The sale contract with that realtor was for six months.
Our realtor had not brought a single person to visit the home the entire contract. So, we informed his office that we would not be renewing our contract and wanted to take the home off the market.
The night the contract expired, at 9:30 pm, I was in the middle of changing clothes because one year old vomited all over me. Suddenly, I heard my front door open.
Before I could react, my realtor waltzed in my home with a young couple. I was both shirtless and covered in vomit. I was mortified. He did not knock and was completely unannounced. I screamed at the top of my lungs. Out of anger, I told the young couple what a terrible realtor he was. I listed all of his faults one by one: one open house, no marketing, and never listened.
The contract had expired. The realtor knew he was not supposed to come after eight at night and should have called first if he was going to pull such a stunt.
I told him to his face what I thought of him. So his new clients had a partially undressed woman and projectile vomiting kid telling them in no uncertain words what I thought of how unprofessional he was.
It was not pretty.”
I Thought We Were Friends!
“A while back my husband and I called ourselves wanting to sell our house. We had a ‘friend’ who was a realtor, but we decided not to work with him for a number of reasons. He had no listings in our area and the few listings he did have were far below the value of our home. We just didn’t think it would be a good match. This, of course, angered our friend.
Rumor had it that our friend was also a pain with other realtors. He even had bad reviews from former clients.
We didn’t want him anywhere near our house. Every single time we got together, our friend found some way to bring up our home, strongly implying we needed him to sell it. I repeatedly told him we didn’t believe in mixing friendship and business because we’d previously had a bad experience and didn’t want to lose him too. It was the truth, but that only intensified things between us.
Knowing that I’d made it clear to our friend and his wife that we would not be using him to sell our house, I didn’t think twice before listing with a different realtor who had much better reviews. We sold our house in two days for a price well over the listed price.
The next six weeks were spent with my husband getting ready to retire from his job and me packing and getting ready to move to another state. I had planned on saying goodbye to all our friends as soon as we were sure the sale would go through.
Two weeks before we were to close on the house and be out, my husband had a heart attack. He spent a week in the hospital and could not help me pack, so I had my hands full. Pretty much everything except what absolutely had to be done, including saying goodbye to friends, got thrown out the window.
The day after my husband’s heart attack, our friend’s wife sent me a nasty message.
‘Why did you go with a different realtor? Don’t you care about our friendship? I just can’t believe you would do this to us!’
Now, I understand that they did not know my husband had a heart attack, but the level of entitlement on top of my other worries just had me floored.
I deleted the email she sent me and we moved without saying goodbye to anyone. We contacted all our other friends after we moved, explained why we did not get a chance to say goodbye, and told them if they were ever in our neck of the woods we had a spare room ready for them.”
A Steal
“After my divorce, I decided to sell my property. I thought the realtor I hired was my friend. I had priced my home far below the money that had been invested in building a custom house and a show barn for the horses and fenced with top-of-the-line no climb for forty-eight acres.
Without my knowledge, the realtor had been telling prospective buyers there was a contract on my place. I heard this directly from two people who contacted me directly and asked if it had been sold yet.
I questioned why they were asking because I genuinely thought the farm was still visibly for sale. When they said they had been told there was a contract on it, I was in total disbelief.
I wanted out of that town so I could move on to my next chapter as a newly divorced woman. I was under so much stress and didn’t need any extra nonsense added to it. So after being assured they would testify, I decided to prosecute or make my realtor’s life a living hell.
The next day, after collecting my wits and control over my anger, I marched into her office without any appointment and demanded my keys back. I then fired the realtor on the spot.
I hired another realtor and she sold it to one of the men who had told me what happened within a couple of weeks.
Later I found out the realtor and her husband were waiting and baiting me to lower my price because were hoping to buy it for themselves. Let that sink in. THEY WANTED MY BEAUTIFUL FARM FOR A STEAL and lied to my prospective buyers.
This was a farm that we had put around nine hundred thousand dollars into. Ever since this experience, I have learned much. One thing is for sure: I do not like most realtors.”
Home Stretch
“The house my husband and I were looking at was a modest mid-century modern home in our desired neighborhood with an affordable price. It had just gone on the market and the seller was going to be reviewing offers in three days by 5 pm.
My husband and I were so excited because the house was the manageable size and architectural style we had hoped for. Since we hadn’t yet relocated to the new state, we put in an offer with our realtor without seeing the house in person. After doing a FaceTime tour of the house, we saw it was going to need some repairs but for nothing major. We put in an offer of twenty-five thousand dollars over the asking price just to ensure our getting the house of our dreams.
A short while later, we were disappointed when we found out that we didn’t get the house. My husband and I assumed the sold price was higher than what we would’ve felt comfortable offering.
However, when we found out the accepted price, things got even more confusing. The house sold for the asking price.
‘Why?’ We wondered.
We found out that the seller’s realtor never presented our offer to the seller. This was because it was the realtor’s final house sale since he was retiring from the business. He just wanted the sale to process as quickly as possible so he could be done.
Our realtor shared this with us as soon as she had heard as we were in 1st position if the original buyer walked away after inspections. We heard that the seller was very upset to know that our backup offer was higher than what she accepted only because she was unaware of our offer. However, her accepted offer was under contract so it was too late to do anything about it.
The whole thing stunk and we were all sore for days (except the accepted buyers!)
But destiny reigned beautifully for us because within three months after that disappointment, my husband and I found ourselves sitting in our real dream home. It’s not a mid-century modern but has the characteristics of that era in a more practical way. It’s more perfect for us than we ever would’ve wished for.”
No Dogs Allowed
“My wife and I were looking at a house in a great neighborhood that we absolutely loved. Despite this, we felt the need to look at it one more time. After we contacted the realtor, she told us that since the owner no longer lived there, it would be fine as long as we phoned her first so she could ‘make arrangements’.
It was long after we moved in that we found out what our realtor was actually doing. Our realtor wanted us to inform her when we wanted to visit the place so she could actually call the neighbor. The neighbor had aggressive pit bulls that the realtor didn’t want us to see, so she called in advance to have him put all TEN dogs out of sight before we visited our soon-to-be home.
We had tons of trouble with them tearing through the fence and attempting to attack our smaller dogs. We couldn’t even let our children outside to play alone in the fenced-in backyard.
The dogs terrorized the entire neighborhood. Sometimes they would break out of their yard and run after people as they exited their houses and cars.
We called animal control numerous times, but finally ended up moving out due to the danger we felt it put our kids in.”
In Cahoots
“In 2015 I was looking at a property in rural Alberta, Canada in 2015. It was a mobile home just off a rural road that had a small plot of land. The home was no prize, but a couple of fixes would make it nice again.
My realtor bad-mouthed the property a lot. He had nothing good to say about it at all. He had almost no information about the heating and was obviously trying to convince me that I didn’t want the property. The realtor even seemed annoyed about having to show it to me.
The realtor evidently was not very intelligent, because he told me a lot of things that explained his attitude. For starters, he shared that the owner was an older woman who had lost her job and had trouble getting another one. She was planning to move into town and rent somewhere after the property was sold. The farmer and owner of the land surrounding this little parcel wanted to buy the parcel back. The farmer, who was a local politician, and the seller disliked each other intensely because of conflicts from the past. Then the realtor shared how he admired the politician and they were ‘sort-of friends’.
It was clear to me that the realtor wanted to help the politician by not getting the property sold, so the politician could scoop up the property for a pittance, at the expense of the woman who was down on her luck.
I was very stressed out at the time because of my search for a new home in a quiet, stress-free area. Even if the price had not been too high, it was clear that whoever bought the property was going to have problems with the politician. Given the behavior of the realtor, I figured that he would also cause problems for anyone trying to buy the property.
The next day, I did the research so I could learn how to report the realtor to whatever authorities were appropriate. Soon I discovered the Real Estate Council of Alberta (RECA). I did more research and learned through news articles that Alberta Real Estate agents were rarely disciplined, and that investigations usually cleared them.
I had enough problems with stress already. The thought of trying to go through the complaint process, with the low probability of a good outcome, stopped me from going any further.
I couldn’t even warn the seller, since I had no idea who she was. I felt sorry for her and the position she was in, and I felt like crap not being able to help her.”
All About Me
“We made the mistake of hiring a friend as our realtor many years ago. He had no idea what he was doing and it showed.
When we first started looking, we emailed a request to view a Redfin listing. Our friend responded by asking us two questions about houses, then proceeded to tell us his life story.
He was super religious and grilled us about our faith and view on politics. It was a little uncomfortable, but we were patient while answering his questions. The entire time he kept bragging about how he homeschooled his kids, his ‘amazing wife,’ and other irrelevant things. Our friend would not shut up about himself.
The house we wanted to see ended up getting an offer just as we were about to go in, so we didn’t get to view it. By then we knew we wanted to get far away from our friend. He ended up calling and emailing us both every week for six months, even after we told him we went with someone else.
He was still ‘checking in’ after we bought our house, and we finally ended up blocking him.”
Just A Crack
“I was showing a house to an investor looking to flip it. During the showing, the selling agent rambled on about how all the fixes in the house were cosmetic and claimed that the home was a ‘sure thing.’
Luckily for me and my investor, this wasn’t our first rodeo.
The realtor then pointed out that all the cracks in the drywall could be ‘easy fixes’.
Taking another look at them, I knew she had to be joking. All the cracks were diagonal, diagonal, giving us a huge indication of foundation issues.
Without saying a word, I went outside. Sure enough, there was a large crack in the slab supporting the house. The chimney was clearly departing from the house. The tenant even said it had been like that since the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the owner refused to fix it.
I talked to the tenant briefly about some visible termite damage. She said it had been like that for fifteen years and had been getting worse every year. The tenant then told me she didn’t even go to the severely damaged parts of the house anymore.
Having heard enough, I sat the agent down and explained the situation to her. She couldn’t understand why everyone was pulling their offers upon inspection. Nowhere in her MLS listing did she indicate structural problems or severe termite damage.
I think I ruined her day.”
