Apr. 24, 2007 - I Assume That Maybe............

Have I told you that I have stumbled upon a message board that is populated by mostly home buyers and sellers?  Yes indeed, a forum for people who like to talk about real estate.  A place where the blind lead the blind.  They talk about the succeesses and failures of real estate deals, likes and dislikes, the value of hardwood as opposed to carpet, ceramic (sometimes refered to as porcelin) tile as opposed to vinyl (in many various spellings), etc. etc.

It virtually puts me in front of more buyers and sellers in a day then I would ever speak to in a month.  I usually don't know where they are located because it's a pretty anonymous kind of place.  I am not really there trolling for business, although I could use some right about now.  I am, however, getting quite the education as to what is in the minds of these folks as it relates to real estate industry professionals.

One thing that is jumping off the screen at me is how often these people use terms like "I believe it cost....", "I think the contract said....", "I assume it's in the contract that....", "maybe that is covered by....". 

Now I don't know about you, but I start out reading, word for word, any document that I will be asking a client of mine to sign.  If that bores them and they want to sign before it's all read to them then I strongly advise them to read the entire documentation at a more convenient time, but do read them.  Whenever they have a question later on, I pull out my copy of documents and we review the section, or sections, in question.  Obviously not every agent, home inspector, loan officer and attorney takes the time.  I had a small inkling of that from my own business relationships but man, it seems to be running rampant throughout the land.

I am no longer amazed by the number of agent haters and FSBOs that there are out there.  It's a very sad commentary on the state of the real estate industry when people are saying that the only thing the real estate professionals care about in a deal is getting to the closing table and collecting their unearned monies.  The sadder thing is that when you have represented consumers running around saying things like "I guess I assume that it might say maybe", the commentary is pretty dead bang on target.

I get a bit of satisfaction from answering some of these posters questions.  I do so in a kind and thoughtful manner.  It's good I get the satisfaction, too, because I am giving them something and asking for nothing.  There is no closing table for me.  The pay off for me is that maybe I can prove to some anonymous poster somewhere in cyberspace that not all real estate professionals are created equal.  Some of us care about how real estate is practiced just because we love the real estate life.  I suppose it's my way of trying to improve the publics perception of us, one post at a time.

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