Quote:
Originally Posted by fintstone
I am curious about this. When I bought my current house, I saw it listed on Zillow. I did my research and decided to buy it. I had my wife (who has a real estate license in another state but does not practice now) call the listing realtor (o speakerphone) to set up an appointment to see it. She told her we wanted to buy it...but wanted to see the inside first (sometimes photos don't show everything as they may be old, etc.). The realtor wanted an application, a contract with SSN to pull a credit check and then would show me the house only if I would spend the day (or more) looking at a bunch of other houses that cost less.
We told her that we did not want another house. We knew exactly what was on the market and specifically wanted to buy that only that one and we would come up with whatever money/financing we needed if we did decide to buy it. Without even knowing who we were, she refused to show it to us...and actually had the nerve to tell us that "we could not afford it". Thinking that absurd, I called another realtor and told her what happened and asked her to show it. She called the listing realtor who did not want let her to show it to us either. The new realtor had to threaten this one a bit to get to show it (some sort of ethics thing). We saw the house the next day and bought it...but I was so mad that I played serious hard ball and ended up paying a lot less than I would have. In the end, it cost the seller money and our realtor got a nice commission for showing us one house (about a half hour's work). The listing realtor missed out on a nice commission.
My question is...do you not show houses to people who will not let you make a credit check or agree to spend much more time with you than they want to as this lady did? I had never had that situation before. Personally, My credit is almost 850, but I don't like to give out my SSN unless I am ready to purchase something. I also do not like the person I am buying something from to know how much money I have (I had enough in my account to pay cash, full asking price, for the home (around $600K), although I did want to get a VA loan (and did)...and wanted to make a lower offer (and did). I think it irrelevant if I can easily afford something or not. That should not effect the price...although it seems to.
This was not my first rodeo, as I have bought at least a dozen homes (I own seven right now)...but, previously I had to fight off realtors who wanted to show me homes whether I wanted to see them or not. Is this a new trend?
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flint, that would have made me furious. to have a realtor (most but not all are just one peg above used car salesmen!) tell you you can't afford it? not sure I would have handled it with the obvious grace that you did.
I had a similar incident occur at foreign cars italia when they opened the Ferrari dealership in charlotte a young punk of a salesman spent about 2 minutes with me showing me around before telling me that it sounded like I was not the type to be a Ferrari owner. funny because I own two. I quickly corrected him and gave him a lesson about being quick to pre-qualify his prospects then helped him understand (just a bit on the abrasive side) that he would never be selling me nor anyone in my circle anything much less a Ferrari.
I hope you are well my friend!
PCB