a forgotten OYAToMLG about agent doubletalk

had this lined up for June 23, but [something, something, something]
This was a perfect post for this past Sunday, but with a succession of open house visits and some social business (actual social business, face-to-face fashion; not social media business) that slipped through the calendar. Had I posted Sunday, it would have been a perfect One Year Ago Today on Manhattan Loft Guy post, as it is I hope it will be a helpful bit of recycling.

In my June 23, 2012, a troubling line potential sellers hear from agents all the time, I riffed on a puff piece from The Real Deal about real estate agent behavior (Doing deals in pajamas) that includes a conversation between an agent (in her pajamas!) and a neighbor in which the agent offers as an inducement to retain her to represent an owner as seller that she has done many deals in the building and, therefore, has “a roster of people looking to buy in the building”. The post explains why this statement should be more alarming than comforting to a potential seller, and walks through the minefield of New York State agency disclosure that this statement leads into.

Read the whole thing; it is not too long and it holds up pretty well a year later.

As I say there, one of the tragic things about how the Manhattan brokerage industry has perverted consumer expectations is that sellers are conditioned to believe that it is in their interests for their agent to bring buyers. It ain’t necessarily so.

© Sandy Mattingly 2013