How have your experiences been with your REALTOR?

[TheVancouverLife]

I`d be interested to know how your experiences have been with your REALTOR when dealing in buying your investment properties.

What specific qualities did you look for when deciding to add a certain REALTOR to your team?

What did your REALTOR do well and what did you wish they could have done better?

Thanks for any comments...

Alan

 

[housingrental]

Not commenting on current realtor
On past realtors prior to current one major issues - they lost me as a client from these:
Slow to respond to phone calls
Slow to respond to emails
Providing unsatisfactory answers to questions - generally inadequate detail or not really answering the question in their response
Poor / no understanding of legal and safety requirements of rentals
Poor / no understanding of zoning issues
Poor / no understanding of property management or appropriate rent rates
Poor / no understanding of appropriate valuations for properties without doing a comparable market value analysis - hard to get general value from this when looking at investment property but with 10% +/- variance possible from not being able to discern accurately - and then how to add value and how much value from X upgrade

 

[Berubeland]

I sent an email to a listing agent a few hours ago for expenses, I ask her for common area hydro in a sixplex, and water expense, she actually replies to me that tenants pay their own hydro and the landlord pays the water. No numbers.

She says there is no rent roll, tenants pay cash.

This is the third email exchange so far... I`m not sure if she`s just dumb or if she`s trying to avoid telling me what the expenses are. It`s not like she`s just listed the property and she doesn`t know yet, this property has been listed for several months.

Frankly with commercial properties on the ICX it`s fill in the blank, the common expenses are listed, just put in the numbers. Probably 75% of listings I see this necessary information isn`t even filled out. Why? The first thing any investor is going to ask. If it`s not there they are wasting their time and mine as well. I have to call... wait to get a reply... ask for the info... wait for the info...

Conversely there are some realtors who do a great job of producing rent rolls and operation expenses in a palatable format. Cheers to them, it`s too bad they are so few and far between.

Another property had been listed for sale by the owner 6 times and the agent still didn`t know the rents and expenses. I had to go with the agent every single time to show the property, to answer any potential questions the potential purchaser might have. I wouldn`t expect the realtor to know as much about the property as the property manager but he had been trying to sell the same property for the last 4 years and he didn`t even know the basics. Then he ran down the owner on a regular basis and then he got fired finally.

So I would say that the agent should know about the property that they`re selling, beyond hey buy this great investment. They might want to be able to answer the following questions.

Why is this property a good investment?
What makes it better than the property down the block?
What is the turnover in this building?
What is the cap rate... for god`s sake add in vacancy, management and maintenance expenses.
Any particular bonuses about the building, close to transit or rail, 5 minutes to groceries (tenants like that it makes the property more rentable)

 

[Thomas Beyer]

QUOTE (TheVancouverLife @ Aug 18 2010, 12:21 AM) What specific qualities did you look for when deciding to add a certain REALTOR to your team?
You get what you give !

If you give nothing .. but expect a lot .. you get little !

Tell realtor

1) how much money you have to invest ! be honest !
2) timeframes, and
3) how much mortgage you are pre-qualified for.

If you do not tell those 3 at least expect little enthusiasm on their end !

Then tell him SPECIFIC properties you look for in what specific area .. VERY VERY SPECIFIC such as:

Townhouse, over 1200 sq ft, south facing veranda, yard of at least 300 sq ft, min. 3 BR, 2 bathrooms or more, in good condition, in XYZ city, between ABC street and XYZ street north of STU Blvd, under $240,000, not on a busy street.

Once you give him that ... and she/he comes back with 5 hits promptly .. follow up on each property .. AND WRITE AN OFFER or 5 ! If you do not, tell realtor specifically why not.

Don`t say: I am looking for cash-flow. Be FAR MORE SPECIFIC. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT.

Most realtors do NOT work well with investors .. but many do. Expect to churn through 20 before you have 1 or maybe 2 good ones you can work with.

Don`t waste their time .. as many "investors" do !! Just because you have 50K and may buy one townhome for 250K in 10 months doesn`t mean you can command the attention span of 14 realtors full-time today.

If you have 500K and expect to buy 5 or 10 townhouses, you can command .. will get better service !

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