I’m not in the market for a house at this time (probably not for another year or so, if at all), but there’s a house for sale that fascinates me.
I called the seller’s agent this week and made an appointment to see the place on Saturday, along with my b.f. and her kid.
So, is that rude? Clearly I’m wasting this woman’s time, and I know that going in but she doesn’t. Should I have told her up front that I’m not going to buy the place and asked if I could still see it?
I don’t think it’s illegal or anything, but it’s not something I would do when it’s easy enough to tell the agent where you are in the process. When Jim and I were in the preliminary, looky-loo stage of changing houses, we made it very clear to everyone involved that we were not in the signing on the dotted line stage, and everyone was cool with it. The real estate agent that came over and gave us some comparables and a rough idea of what our house was worth was the agent we eventually used for the sale, so she made her money then.
When we were just looking, I went to a lot of open houses because you do need to get educated before you start looking seriously, but I didn’t waste an agent’s time on purpose without letting them know where I stood.
You might be wasting her time on THIS house, but she may have other houses and if she impresses you as an agent, when you’re ready to buy, you may remember her and use her
Sure your wasting her time so it’s rude but it’s not a major infraction. Sellers agents show homes all the time to people that aren’t going to buy them. Want to make up the karma tell some people about the house thus giving some free advertising.
You’re not just wasting her time, you’re actively interfereing with her job. You’re preventing her from being able to work by making her waste that time on you.
I guess you could argue that her job is showing houses, so she is doing her job, and I agree that a showing with a person who isn’t intending to buy can easily turn into a sale at some point (or a client, at any rate). It’s kind of a grey area; agents do show a lot of houses before one turns into a sale, and people who aren’t planning to buy sometimes change their minds, but knowing that you can’t or won’t buy a place that they’re showing you (and that you’ll never use them as an agent) is a waste of their time.
I don’t think it is a grey area at all. The bottom line is you are being incredibly selfish and I suspect that if someone came into your place of business and wasted a few hours of your time with no intention of using your service or buying your product you would be miffed. The agent has to spend not only time, but money as well or do you think gas is free?
I understand that you would like to see the house, but pretending to be a prospect and wasting the time, effort and money of someone is not a good thing to do.
You could ask if there is an upcoming open house and simply go to that.
It’s wasting the agent’s time, which is a rude thing to do. If there is an open house and you go just to look, that’s fine because the agent is going to be there anyway.
I don’t think it’s a big deal at all; I’m guessing more than one home has been sold to people who think they’re not ready to buy, but then they fall in love with a house. Realtors know this, and I’ve never met one who wasn’t thrilled to show a house to anyone even remotely interested. Even if you don’t buy this one, you’ll meet the agent and maybe call him/her at a later date and maybe end up buying something.
Go for it. You want to look, so you should be able to look.
If nothing else, it’ll balance the cosmic realtor scales after our agent constantly showed houses to my wife and I that were either $20,000 more than our upper limit or were in locations we didn’t want to live in.
After we switched agents, we bought the third house she showed us.
If you really feel bad about it, call her back and ask her. I promise she’ll say it’s ok, and then you can go with a clear conscience!
Is the house currently occupied? Because if it is then you are probably going to end up wasting some of the seller’s time as well. A little bit harder to justify that if you have no intention of buying the house.
Bingo. There’s a FLLW house on the market not far from here that I would love to go through but without the help of a rich relative or a winning lottery ticket I could never afford. A friend is a realtor and I could ask him to get me in but I wouldn’t waste his or anyone else’s time on such an endeavor.
I think you’re wasting her time. It’d be different if it were an open house, but she has to make a special trip for you and you’re 100% certain you have no plans to buy a house or even consider buying one.
If it were me, I probably wouldn’t do it unless the house were open for viewing. Just my two cents, of course.
Totally agree that if you’re honest about where you are in the process, she’ll still get you in. You’ll also probably get a phone call every couple of months asking if you’re ready to go to a few more showings.
It is not bad form. She’s a sales person, right? If she’s a good sales person, I foresee you moving in a few months even though you maybe didn’t intend to do it so soon.
Thanks for all the responses so far. I for sure see it from both (all?) sides, which is why I asked in the first place.
The house is not occupied. I did ask that. So I’ll only be ruining one person’s day, ideally.
The pictures on zillow.com show a R.E. company sign on the lawn, but now, after 260+ days on the market, the yard sign is for that of an independent agent who, when I called at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, answered the phone with a sleepy “Hello?” and took a a few extra seconds to figure out what I was asking about.
I didn’t ask, but I am under the impression that there’s no Open House happening any time soon.
Anyway, I’m not exactly stressed about it. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the house could win over me and my husband and make us push our timeline up, plus it’s well within our price range and it meets/surpasses most of our requirements for our next place.
If you’ve made a specific appointment with her, then yes, I think it’s rude, because you’re wasting her time. It would be quite a different matter if it were an Open Home and you had just taken the opportunity to have a look at the house.
Holy shit that’s cheap! Yeah, tell the agent that you’ve been looking at the listing online and the house is intriguing you, and they’ll be happy to take you to see it. That’s pretty close to how we bought our first house - I kept looking at this listing, and it kept not selling and kept dropping in price, and finally I had to go see it to see what was wrong with it. Turns out the only thing wrong with it was that everyone else couldn’t see the value in it.