Real Estate Rants

Real Estate Rants

Real Estate Rant #1: The Title Company

You must go through a title company to buy real estate. My uncle used to be the manager of one, and he said it was the most disorganized place he had ever worked. One of his friends had purchased a house with him, and they both decided to go through the title company my uncle worked for. After they had purchased the house, they went back to my uncle’s friend’s house for an open house party or something like that. While there, they saw that another friend of theirs was looking at their house. They invited her in and she mentioned how she planned on buying some furniture for her new home. When she asked where she should look, they told her about all of the great deals at “Big Lots”. That is what you call an inside joke if I ever heard one! Anyways, this story just shows how unprofessional title companies are sometimes (maybe all of them). It also shows that real estate agents are not very professional either because my friend didn’t know what Big Lots was! Anyways though…

I hate title companies because if you have any issues whatsoever with your purchase/sale transaction (and I don’t care if it is your fault or not), you will probably have no recourse but to sue them in court. I am moving house in January, and I had to go in yesterday to sign some papers. One of the papers required me to waive my right to sue their company (the title company that is) if any issues arise. I was like “that is fine with me, but how about you waive your right to sue me?”. The lady at the desk laughed and said it wasn’t possible, but she could give me a copy of the waiver.

Real Estate Rant #2: Real Estate Agents

I hate real estate agents because they are always trying to rip you off. For example, when I was younger (about 6-8 years ago) my family got an offer on our house for $10K above the asking price! This made everyone happy except for our real estate agent who had no commission! She was so mad that she stormed out of the room while we were celebrating! Later on, though we found out that there were no contingencies or inspections or anything else on this contract so we decided not to accept it after all. Even later on though she still tried taking us out for dinner just because she felt bad about not getting a commission from us anymore! We went along with her plans until we told her that we would only go if she picked up the tab since it would be eating into our profits from selling our house at such a high price. She decided to leave us alone after that. Anyways, your agent should be working for you! They are supposed to help you sell your house and get the best price possible, but they also want to make sure that they still get their commission! This is just one example of how bad real estate agents can be. I knew a guy who was selling his house in Massachusetts, and he told me that he had an offer on his house for $50K over the asking price with no contingencies or anything else. Another agent had told him about this offer so he called them up and asked what was wrong with the deal? They said it was because there were some termites in the attic which needed some work done on them. He asked if they would do this work themselves (the people making the offer) since it would not cost very much at all (maybe $500-$1000) and then call him back when they had taken care of it. He never got a call back from these people though because apparently these “real estate agents” didn’t want him having any chance of getting more money for his house than what they could get him! Are you kidding me?

I hope you found this post interesting – the next one will be more positive!

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