Why are Real Estate Agents So Rude?

Real Estate is one of the most significant investments a person makes in their lifetime. Most people spend their entire life savings to purchase a house, apartment, or a piece of the desired land. The process of buying a property takes time and needs professional help.

Without a real estate agent buying a property is challenging and risky. Thus, everyone hires an agent to help them purchase their dream homes or apartments. The buyer hires a real estate agent to work for them. Even though the agent is a contractor, not an employee, they are hired to provide a service by the buyer.

Similarly, if someone wants to sell their property, they also hire a real estate agent to help them market it, manage showings, and sell the property.

Therefore, both the sellers and buyers deal with real estate agents. 

One thing that everyone agrees on is that real estate agents are typically rude to both buyers and sellers. They talk to customers in a condescending tone, ignore calls, and show smugness.

There are several reasons for it, and this article presents them.

However, not all real estate agents are rude. Some agents go beyond their professional liability to help customers and work very hard to help people. But agents like these are rare at this time.

Limited Entry Barrier

Becoming a real estate agent is easy compared to other professions, such as lawyers, doctors, engineers, or accountants. Each of these professions requires at least a bachelor’s degree, more than that in some cases. However, one only needs a GED or equivalent education.

Furthermore, people in other professions go through higher education and extensive training to perform better. In the case of Real Estate, only a pre-licensing course and an exam is taken to certify someone as an agent. 

For example, according to New York State, here are the requirements one needs to become a licensed real estate agent:

  • Submit a completed application and the required fee to the Department of State.
  • Be 18 years old
  • Have successfully completed a Department of State approved 75-hour salesperson qualifying education course. 
  • Pass the NYS Real Estate Salesperson examination

Similar to New York, every state in the US has a low barrier to entry to become a real estate agent. However, a low entry barrier isn’t a bad thing. The problem is that these agents don’t get enough knowledge in these courses.

Real Estate has a very high turnover rate. Most agents don’t succeed overnight. It’s a long process and takes time and experience.

Buying a property is a considerable investment for most people. Thus, a potential buyer will always take time to close any deal. However, agents with less experience see that a buyer is dragging their feet and starts to behave rudely toward the buyer.

No Review System

In a competitive market, where a customer can review a service provider, the provider typically tries its best to deliver a good service. For example, the service quality between a taxi and Uber is noticeable. It’s primarily because the taxi driver is not beholden to its service by anyone. Their earnings don’t depend on providing exemplary service or behaving nicely with customers. 

On the contrary, an Uber or Lyft driver must provide a good service because his earnings depend on it. After each ride, passengers rate the drivers. If the ratings decrease too much, Uber and Lyft will drop the driver from their system, which will impact the driver’s livelihood. 

As these Uber and Lyft drivers are held responsible for their service through a rating system, generally, their service is way better than the typical taxi.

However, there’s no public rating system for most real estate agents. Thus, most agents aren’t held responsible for their rude behavior. Even though Zillow and Realtor, there’s a system to review real estate agents, typically, those platforms don’t publish any negative reviews. Thus, it’s not an honest review system. 

There are millions of buyers and millions of real estate agents. These buyers and sellers typically will encounter a single agent in their lifetime. Most of the time, buyers will endure agents’ shenanigans to buy their dream homes. 

The agents know that they can get away with their behavior without consequence. Most of these agents work for a broker. Thus, the broker will get all the negative press and publicity, not the agent. If necessary, the agent will change his job. Therefore, these agents have no real-world accountability for their rude behavior or poor service. Thus, they treat property buyers and sellers condescendingly.

Agents Judge The Buyer

Whenever a buyer goes to a real estate agent, they first judge the buyer whether he has money or not or whether they will qualify for a loan. Typically, Real Estate agents only get paid when a property gets sold. Thus, if they perceive that a buyer can’t close on a house, they will try to avoid the buyer.

No buyer will purchase the first house, apartment, or land they see on the market. Most of the time, the buyer will live in their new house for their entire life. Thus, most of them have a lot of requirements regarding their potential homes. 

However, every home, apartment, neighborhood, school, etc., is different. Thus, getting a dream home is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort. 

A real estate agent may think some house is excellent for the customer, but the buyer may disagree. Many agents get annoyed that the buyer does not like the home they showed them. 

If a house sells for $400,000, buyer one closes the deal after 4 house showings, but buyer two closes the deal after 8 showings. Buyer two took more agent time than buyer one. However, the agents get paid the same in both cases even though buyer two took more time.

As a result, most of the time, real estate agents show annoyance and behave rudely with those buyers who don’t close homes with the first few showings. 

Sellers will always ask for more for their property. It’s understandable. However, seller agents also behave rudely to those sellers who ask for more money for their property because the agent believes that the seller is asking more than the market value. They think asking more will make the property unsellable. And as the agents don’t get paid until the property sells, these agents show annoyance with many sellers.

Every Agent is Different

Real Estate agents are busy, and they work on commission. Many buyers are first-time home buyers and don’t know the entire process. Thus they may ask a lot of questions. Many agents get annoyed hearing these questions and behave rudely. 

It’s your money, your life, your decision. Real Estate involves hundreds of thousands of dollars. The seller’s agent will try their best to sell the property. Thus, hiding the property’s fault or fixing issues only cosmetically is common. However, the agent is in the business of making money in every case. They will look for their profit above all. 

Sometimes, these agents feel uncomfortable with some customers’ questions and behave weirdly. It’s a defensive mechanism on their part. Moreover, not every agent is capable of handling its clients. 

Real Estate is a billion-dollar business. Many people see a lot of money flowing and want to jump into the action. However, most fail to see that these established realtors worked for decades to develop their businesses. They didn’t become successful overnight. Their experience, reputation, good behavior, and referral made them successful. However, many new real estate agents fail to see it. 

Many agents think that their dress, car, and talking style will make them successful but ignore their manners. Those who are primarily driven by money, not customer satisfaction, tend to be those who behave rudely with clients.

Real Estate is one of the most significant purchases any person makes in their lifetime. However, agents helping them during this process came into the real estate business due to the low entry barrier. Thus, many agents behave unprofessionally.