12 signs of a good realtor

Generally speak­ing, of course, I’m of the opin­ion that a good real­tor is a dead real­tor. But still.

A proper realtor:

1. Takes the com­mis­sion from who­ever ini­ti­ated the deal. If an apart­ment owner asks you to rent the place out, they should pay for the ser­vice, which is help­ing to rent it out. If a com­pany comes and says “find us an office”, the com­pany pays. I’ve written about this before.
2. Views the prop­erty per­son­ally, with a camera.
3. Describes the prop­erty thor­oughly, with as many details as possible.
4. Good photos of every room, the front door, the entrance hall and the build­ing’s facade.
5. A floor plan. If the owner didn’t pro­vide one, it’s easy to draw it your­self: that’s still better than no plan at all.
6. Photos named after the room num­bers marked on the plan (easy to match up and find your way around).
7. Gives the exact build­ing number (with let­ters) and a link to a map (in online listings).
8. Gives the exact dis­tance to the metro (in meters, not in sub­jec­tive min­utes’ walk), or to other land­marks that matter for that prop­erty (you can mea­sure it with the same online maps).
9. Reminds the client of the appoint­ment an hour or an hour and a half before it. (Thanks, Sergey :)
10. Removes prop­er­ties that have been let from the direc­to­ries (list­ings that are up to date).
11. If they build a web­site with a data­base of list­ings, they think through an advanced search by as many para­me­ters as possible. That’s the main thing for such sites. Oh, and then they keep the site updated, yes.
12. By the way, a proper real­tor really should have a website. It costs noth­ing these days.

You’ll say:

“But how am I sup­posed to find time for all that? I’m out at view­ings all the time! I’m for­ever answer­ing a pile of calls.”

“That’s exactly the point,” I’ll answer. Everything I’ve writ­ten here will sig­nif­i­cantly cut down:

• first, point­less calls asking for details;
• second, point­less view­ings for the wrong people (they’d have seen it in the photos and not wasted your time and theirs);
• third, point­less calls about options that are no longer avail­able (did I men­tion that a proper real­tor doesn’t lure poten­tial clients with made-up per­fect options just to get their con­tact details?)

So a proper real­tor does better work, goes to fewer meet­ings and closes more deals (the meet­ings are more effi­cient), earns more, raises the pres­tige of the pro­fes­sion (not least through a fairer split of the com­mis­sion), and enjoys life, proud of the work.

P.S. My expe­ri­ence with real­tors may not let me judge the full scope of their work prop­erly, so I could be wrong. Though I don’t think so :)

P.P.S. Damn, I still haven’t worked out whether the Russian word is spelled риэлтор or риелтор. Definitely not риэлтер, I think.