You will be happy here – or else
Jun 14
Does anyone else find this kind of advertising completely surreal?
I saw this on the side of a terrace house in Darlinghurst the other day. When did this bizarre cult of personality around real estate agents begin? I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss who the body in a suit is that shows me around a property, and it certainly doesn’t have any bearing and influence on whether I choose to get horrifically in debt by buying it.
I remember the agent who sold us our place tried to give us some kind of ridiculous New Age numerology spiel as part of her hard sell, and after we had a verbal agreement with the owners, she was very embarrassed when I caught her showing another couple around the place behind my back. She then had the gall to pretend we were great friends and gave us a fruit basket.
For some inexplicable reason, real estate agents think they are today’s rockstars. My suburb is plastered with pictures of their grinning faces and ‘quirky’ advertisements. Another one is a gag-inducing parody of a ‘most wanted’ ad complete with pillock holding a name board in prisoner photo style. Yep, that makes me want to trust you.
I suppose real estate agents just believe their own hype. They really think a dump that needs to be bulldozed is a ‘home renovator’s delight’, that wardrobes are actually ‘studios’, or that it’s quite acceptable to pretend someone has made an offer on the house you were interested in, when they haven’t.
Sorry, but you don’t know if I’ll be happy there. Next time a picture of the house interior would be a damn site more useful than your grinning mug, thanks very much. Have a nice day!
Jun 14, 2011 @ 18:36:41
Here in NZ they are similarly vile creatures, the upside is we are getting rid of them.
More and more people here are happy to use sites like trademe . co . nz to sell their houses, completely removing real estate agents from the equation.
The best part is, when all the agents tried to have a collective moan and say “computers are taking our jobs!” the general response was “great, you never did it that well to begin with!”
Jun 14, 2011 @ 19:51:27
But how could someone possibly buy a house without an agent’s reassurance that they’ll be happy there? 😉
Jun 15, 2011 @ 12:33:44
heh, exactly!
I like to imagine these agents in other places in society… Imagine Grocery Agents:
“oh sure, you THINK you want those potatoes, but I have the potatoes of your DREAMS! Their a little over your budget, but your SO worth it… (and I get a 15% cut.)”
I feel for any one who fears losing their job to the evolution of technology and the world… but that is true for EVERYONE sooner or later.
The smart thing to do is to keep finding new things you can do, not to demand we all should live in the past.
Good by real estate agents, we might have missed you if you hadn’t been jerks.
Jun 16, 2011 @ 09:01:19
I am particularly fond of the recent trend to add little ‘quips’ to the house descriptions.
‘Wisteria charm!’ (always with the exclamation points!); ‘Carefree city living!’; ‘Wonderful fixer-upper!’; ‘Gardenia nights!’ (no kidding).
It’s like they’ve gotten the people who do movie catchlines to write copy for them.