Knoxville Real Estate Blogs

The Truth About Realtors....

The term Realtor often strikes fear in the heart of the young and old alike.  I see and experience it all the time.  Are you or someone you know guilty of the following: 1) Open Houses- Being short to a Realtor, avoiding eye contact, writing down false information in the Seller's requested guest log. 2) Requesting information from a Realtor and then never returning their phone call or e-mail, 3) Asking a Realtor for help but providing false contact information.

I will be the first to admit, that I myself was guilty of ALL of these things.  When I was looking for my first home I was scared of Realtors.  I contacted a few off of signs to get sales price, gave out my wrong phone number, did not return calls if they called to offer me help, and while I am ashamed of admitting it, wasted a lot of their time.  Now that I think back on it, I try to recall what I was running from.  How scary and repulsive can a skilled professional offering me FREE advice, resources, and services really be? 

I ended up searching for my first home for months.  During this period, I wasted probably several hundred of my precious hours trying to find my own home and all the while paying hundreds of dollars to a landlord to continue living in a cramped apartment that I hated (which by the way ended up being only $15 dollars a month cheaper than my mortgage!).  I picked up every real estate book I could get my hands on (this was during the pre-Internet real estate marketing explosion), spent hours upon hours, thumbing through the microscopic home listings, highlighting the ones I was interested in, wasted hours calling on properties, tons of time trying to figure out where the properties were, wasting my own gas money driving around (and often getting lost) searching for these properties, just to realize they were already under contract, sold, or were off the market.

When I finally did decide to enlist the help of a Realtor (which by the way was several headaches later), we sat down with them, told him what I was looking for, he sent me some listings, I found some that looked good, then we met him at his office, went out and looked at properties, and two days later I found exactly what I was looking for and wrote up my contract for my first house...and all this help, cost me, as the Buyer, absolutely nothing! 

If I had only known what I know now, I wish I had called upon a Realtor the second I even considered purchasing a new home, and had them use their professional knowledge, skills, and tools to find my home, instead of wasting my time and money.

I am here to tell you that you should have no fear when it comes to Realtors, especially this one.  Think about it, in what other industry are professionals willing to give away tons of valuable information, tools, and resources for FREE.  As a professional Realtor I spend countless hours working on, researching, and attempting to provide my on-line visitors with a one-stop real estate resource center.  

I value what I do, am passionate about what I do, and genuinely enjoy helping others.  Be it a character flaw, or be it considered bad business, I gladly will help out on-line customers, spend my time setting them up on listing notifiers, answering ANY real estate question, or even just general information about the Knoxville, TN area.  Do I charge a fee for this?  The answer is "NO".  Would I ever consider charging a fee for this?  The answer is once again "NO".  Will I EVER, at any point in time, charge a BUYER a fee for any of my services, the answer is once again "NO".

Therefore, I may ask why run in fear, and provide inaccurate contact information, when my only attempt is to help you.  Try it, and see, I am sure that you have a lingering real estate question on your mind, perhaps you want to move to Knoxville and want to know about certain communities, perhaps you would like a list of mortgage lenders, home inspectors, title companies, curious about how to price your house to sell, etc...  Pick up the phone and call me at 865-237-5289 or e-mail me at Christine@HomesForSaleKnoxville.com and let me help you.  As a professional I can make the process much more efficient for you and save you your valuable time.  Also remember, there is no reason to hide....as always my buyers services are completeley and totally FREE.

Published Wednesday, January 23, 2008 11:31 PM by Christine McInerney