We Tell it Like It Is

I've been representing buyers on mostly foreclosures this year. This is how the process works:

1) My buyer and I write an offer on a property.

2) I submit the offer to the listing agent.

3) The listing agent submits the offer to either the bank representative or the asset management company that is taking care of the sale of the property.

4) The bank or mgmt company makes a decision about the offer and comes back to the listing agent w/an answer.

5) The listing agent calls me & relays the decision to me and I relay it back to the buyer.

Here's how the last 2 purchases have been going so far for my buyers & I and this is a pretty good representation of how they have all been going this year:

Scenario 1--Single male buyer

1) Buyer likes home and wants to write an offer. I call listing agent to see if property has other offers written. It takes me 3 days to get a hold of her after I just kept calling and she eventually picked up the phone.

2) Buyer & I write an offer.

3) I submit offer via fax to listing agent per instructions on her voicemail.

4) I call agent 4 times (no answer each time) and email her twice to confirm that she received my offer. No response.

5) I call a 5th time. Her voicemail greeting has changed. It now states that all offers must be EMAILED.

6) I email the offer 12 hours after I had faxed it and receive an auto confirmation that says the offer has been received and will be submitted to the bank. It also says it will take 3-5 days before the bank responds and that due to a high volume of calls/offers/emails, if we do not receive a call or email back from them in 3-5 days, assume our offer was not accepted. It tells me not to call them.

7) So the buyer and I sit in limbo for 3-5 days and will never receive an official decline; just an assumption that our offer is cancelled after 5 days. Great service.

Scenario #2--Young couple buyers

1) Buyers & I write an offer and submit it to listing agent.

2) Offer gets accepted, however, negotiations take 2 weeks because agent is overwhelmed w/too many other listings and only responds to my messages every 4 days.

3) All required inspections can't occur because water heater is broken (main water had to be shut off due to water heater valve spouting out water). This was determined on March 28th.

4) Water heater was replaced on May 1st after the bank failed to respond to this issue for a month. We were supposed to close on April 30th.

5) Required inspections were scheduled for May 4th but water was not turned back on so they couldn't inspect.

6) It took me 4 days to get a hold of the listing agent to bring her attention to this matter. Now we must wait another week for all of this to get resolved.

My gripe is that every foreclosure listing agent that I have dealt with is so overwhelmed with work that they cannot get back to me in a reasonable amount of time or not at all. These people take on 3-5x the amount of listings a normal agent will take on because the commission is a lot less so they must triple their work load. They have no time to provide any sort of customer service and it reflects poorly on me as an agent. My buyers get frustrated and feel as if I'm not doing everything I can when in fact its not me that's lacking in skill and effort. I'm sooo lucky that both buyers in the scenarios I described above have been so understanding. However, I've had other buyers get incredibly impatient and take it out on the only person they have access to, which is me. There should be some sort of law against an agent being able to take on so many listings. Or, if an agent clearly proves that they are not capable of handling all the work, they need to hang it up. They are making people's lives miserable. The home buying process really sucks because of them.

4) It is now May 7th and we are STILL waiting for