What wouldn’t I do for a client? I wouldn’t break the law… I wouldn’t cross ethical lines… but I’d do a lot. A lot more than the stuff they teach you in pre-license class. Way more than I have printed on my buyer & seller marketing packets.
Let’s see… there was the time I drove to Sioux City at 6am to get paperwork that should have been overnighted the day before, the time I nearly went to Kansas for documents at 8pm at night (and had my sister who lived in Kansas City lined up to help take 3 hours of the driving off my trip), or the time I rocked & fed a baby while my clients did the home inspection with the inspector, or when I shimmied up a porch & crawled thru a window to get into a house that should have been unlocked, convinced my husband & sister to help me clean & empty a listing that a seller left a mess, I showed one buyer over 50 homes in less than 3 weeks, or when I picked up a seller’s dog & took him for a ride when another Realtor (who was scared to death of dogs) wanted to show one of my listings at the last-minute, I’ve left my husband at a restaurant because a buyer wanted to write an offer before they left town, oh & there’s the time I did a somersault to keep a 4-year-old from throwing a fit during a final walk thru, I once met with a buyer at 5am to write an offer, let’s not forget the many times I’ve learned way more than I need & had to see first hand the workings of a septic system, I’ve shoveled snow from walkways at another Realtor’s foreclosure listing, I’ve walked 3 miles of timber in high heels because the client “just had to see it,” I’ve cleaned out a garage (think paint cans, oil, garbage, wood scraps) that an unruly seller decided to leave at the last-minute, I’ve painted a porch that had peeling paint… I could go on and on.
It’s not just me either. Just the other day another Realtor in my office ended up taking the son of one of his clients to the son’s doctor appointment when they were running late, I know one agent in our office actually moved her clients into her own house for two weeks when their house wasn’t ready, another picked up her seller’s children at school so their house could be shown, countless stories of having to put on rubber gloves to clean out abandoned refrigerators… I think you’re starting to get the idea.
Now I’m not telling you these things so you can think up new ways to test my resolve. I’m not telling you these things to make you think I’m some great person. I’ve had plenty of “easy” transactions that went off without a hitch and I appreciate every one of them.
I am telling you these things so that the next time you hear someone say “Realtors make a lot of money for nothing,” or “I can do everything a Realtor can do” or even “using a real estate agent is a waste of money” then you can think of all those things above and just smile!