Ideal Agent Trait #2: Responsiveness

Several years ago I heard a statistic, that the average time a real state agent takes to call you back is 50 hours. That's a little more than 4 days. That seemed high to me, but I know a lot of agents who never call you back. So maybe it isn't.

The average is the arithmetic mean, so it doesn't take very many extreme values to skew the average. For example, take 5 agents, four of whom take day to return your call, and one that takes over 154 hours (>6 days); add them up and get 250; then divide by the number of agents (5); and you get an average of 50 ((24+24+24+24+154)/5=50). So what we have is a few agents taking inordinately long to call people back.

Agents vary in their responsiveness, but most are pretty good. I used to return calls as soon as I knew I had them. But it's not uncommon for it to take 2 weeks to get a call back. One agent I know never returns phone calls, and when you ask her about it she acts like it's something cute.

It's not cute, it's maddening. When my wife and I first moved to Philadelphia, we called 3 times on a property we wanted to see. The listing agent never called us back. A week later the agent called apologizing for the agent. We told her and she asked us if we wanted to see it. We said no thanks.

There also seems to be a attitude that if a person doesn't have an answer to your question, they don't have to respond. Wrong. The person needs to call and tell you they don't have an answer to your question. Oh, well.

Anyway, make sure the agent you choose calls you back preferably right away, or at the longest within 24 hours, but they should respond as soon as the find out there's a message.

I'm trying to create a more informed real estate customer. Is this working?

Want to learn entrepreneurship? Go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

Want to get a poem or short story published? Go to www.byandforwriters.blogspot.com

Want tips on writing? Go to www.timswritingblog.blogspot.com. Or want to read my first book for free, or maybe get it? Go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.