Reply: 1.2.1.1.1.1.1
From: Adam Randall
Hello
I never implied all real estate agents are crooks (only the ones Ive met!!! Joking). The real estate agents have a major interest in the sale of the property. If the building inspectors are recommended by the real estate agents then there is a fair chance kickbacks are involved. Im sorry if I hurt your feelings (ive got the number of a good chaplain) but the more I think about it, the more I realise I had rocks in my head when I made that decision.
Asyral you mean to tell me if you were selling a house for a client (your client who is paying you good money), you would recommend a building inspector who may well tell prospective buyers that the house needs to be bulldozed, I think you must be living in an alternate dimension. If you are like most real estate agents ,if you are selling a dodgy house at best you hope the word inspector does not come up, at worst you hand them the number to Rocco Dodgy's 3rd cousin (owner of AAAAArdvark building co).
It was not until 3 months after I had my written inspection done that I realised how ripped off I had been. I paid $230, the inspector was at the house for approx 45mins he banged a couple of walls, noted that a window winder was not working, and that was it (house is about 300sqm).
My mate came into work about 3 months later with a building inspection (cost him $150)done on a property he was going to buy, quite frankly I thought it was the latest edition of the encyclopedia Britannica, it was about 18 pages long, and listed everything (mine was 1 1/2 pages double spaced).
I will list things I found out about my house after it was bought:
Hot water system blew up (over 10 Y/old)
Septic tank setup illegally
pool waste setup illegally
wood rot in several places (hidden)
1 roof rafter was rotten (completely gone).
about 1 hundred other little things that for 230 dollars should have been picked up.
Would I have bought the house if I had known these things? In this case yes however I would have had much more ammunition to get a better price.
Getting back to dodgy realestate agents, the one who sold me this place actually asked me if I could give him 3K in cash seeing as he had got me such a good price, and this was going to reduce his commission on it substantially, I almost laughed out loud, maybe if honest realestate agents like you want your industry to have a good name, then maybe you should try and weed out the very high percentage of sharks that are out there.
After doing a bit of work setting up computers in the realestate industry I have no problem treating realestate agents with the disdain I currently do, in the short time I worked around these people, my view of them went from nuetral to highly negative, to the point of wanting to take a shower after being in their company to long. I have no doubt there are excellent realestate agents out there trying to make an honest living, problem is they look the same as the dodgy ones.
Regards Adam
