In hotter or busier markets, I always find that agents are crazier, generally speaking.  In fact, it’s often in those calmer, balanced markets that I risk running out of fodder for TRB!

Earlier this week when I was discussing the hot market with my colleagues, I opined on what I just said above.  I said that we were going to see a lot of crazy happenings once again, and a friend said, “I can’t wait to read about this on your blog.”

So I laid down a challenge right then and there: send me your crazy happenings and we’ll see how many we can come up with by week’s end.

Well, they did not disappoint!

Let’s go through what our agents put together in a week’s time, although, some went back a ways to get some really “good” ones, and by good, I mean bad.

The first example is the only one here that’s mine.

I’ll admit it.

And you can tell me I’m a jerk if you want to.

I recently had a townhouse listing at 170 Brickworks Lane, #2.

That’s pretty self-explanatory, right?  There’s the address and there’s the unit number.  Each house has, umm, ya know, the number of the unit embossed on the brick outside.

I had 50 showings but one was rather odd and I received this message:

Honestly, I wasn’t being facetious or sarcastic.

I just didn’t understand how somebody could not find the property.  But more to the point, how in the world was I supposed to explain this to somebody over a text message?

The best way I knew to explain where “2” was located was to tell him, “Look for the large ‘For Sale’ sign out in front,” because it’s the only townhouse in this small complex that has a sign.  It’s about as easy as Sesame Street’s, “One of these things just doesn’t belong.”

However, one person on my team had the best response when he said:

“Tell him to look for 1, then look for 3, then look in between those two.  Can’t miss it.”

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I can’t remember if I posted this in a previous blog, but just in case I didn’t, here it is again – because it’s an all-timer:

Can you imagine?

That’s a “professional” talking to a colleague about her listing…

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This one pisses me off.

There were twenty-one offers on a house a few weeks ago and the listing agent never called the agents who had registered offers.

No discussion.

No contact.

Just this email four hours after offers were submitted:

Greed at its finest.

Twenty-one offers and they turned them ALL down.

Although this one is just as bad:

Not only did they turn down all the offers presented, but they didn’t notify the buyer agents until the next morning.

Absolutely brutal.

Just awful, nasty, almost hilariously-bad “professionalism” on behalf of these folks who call themselves agents.

Then the kicker: “The property is available to make an offer.  You can call me to find out what may or may not work.”

So the agent is saying, “We got a ton of offers, turned them all down, and remain on the market at a price which we would never consider selling for.  Call us to randomly throw figures at us and we’ll confirm or deny if we’re interested.”

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This one is bizarre.

It’s from the files of “This can’t be true, nobody is this dumb,” except, well, it happened…

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This one made no sense to me.

A colleague sent me this and asked, “Is it in any way possible that the listing agent thinks this is negotiating?”

I would love to see that agent’s face as she clicked “send.”

Did she think it was funny?

I don’t get it.

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This is an agent who never booked a viewing on the property, never checked MLS to see if it was leased, and then emailed an offer…

You can’t make this up.

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I wrote about this phenomenon on my blog a while back.

A lot of rental agents are sending their clients’ supporting documentation to the listing agent and saying, “Approve my tenant-client and then I’ll show it to them,” even though that’s backwards.

Here’s an example, but tell me if you also see the red flag here:

Red flag?

Well, for one, this agent is lazy and isn’t showing properties.

I like his line; “Only when the landlords approves him to be a tenant, will I then take my time to show him the unit.”

Uh-huh.  Is that so?  I’m sorry, but who the fuck are you?

But here’s the red flag: he’s clearly copied and pasted something incorrectly since he has “33 Bay Street” in his subject line but then “18 Yonge Street” in the body.

This is agents in Toronto.  This is professional in our industry.

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Another colleague sent me this.

She had a listing and there’s a parking pad.

The owners have made all their payments, and this was noted in the listing.

But one agent had no clue what this meant:

I’m honestly not sure how to misunderstand this…

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This is a good one:

The listing agent was informed by the seller……………that another agent sold the property?

Just when I thought I had seen it all.

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Last, but not least, an agent joined our brokerage in November and she and I had never really interacted but I knew who she was, and she knew who I was.

We’re now besties.

Last week, she said, “Do you still do tag marketing?”

I said that I did not, and I actually only did tag marketing once, like seven or eight years ago, and I didn’t like it because somebody the ads were showing up in random places.

For example: a client took a screenshot of my ad on Breitbart News, sent it to me, and said, “Hey David, why are you advertising on Breitbart?”

I emailed him back and said, “Hey John, it’s tag marketing.  It follows you around the internet.  So if you were on my blog, and you went to Yahoo, it might put up an ad for my blog on Yahoo.”

Then I added, “Hey John, why are you reading Breitbart?”

My new work-BFF told me that years ago, before she knew what tag marketing was, she found my ad on a website she was visiting.

She had no clue why I was advertising on that site.

She took a screen-shot and sent it to her friends and they thought it was hilarious.

What was it?  Why was it so funny?

Take a look.  Since she saved it and still has it seven years later.

For the record, I only used this awful, Michael Correleone-style photo once, and now it lives in infamy in this 8-year-old advertisement…

That’s right.

My friend saw my ad on a website about ovulation.

She was searching for, well, ovulation information, and who’s advertisement comes up?

Mine.

That’s how tag marketing works.  She had been on my blog earlier in the day.

But she didn’t know that at the time, so she thought that I was purposely advertising on the WebMD page about ovulation pain.

Is it possible to be embarrassed years later?  Because I just might be.

But I’m also oddly flattered that she still has this on her phone.

God, that’s a weird photo.  It doesn’t even look like me.

I know more about ovulation pain than I do about my own face in that picture, but I digress…

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Well, I hope these gave you a laugh or two.

Maybe a face-palm or three.

Perhaps a “You’ve got to be kidding me,” or five or six.

Have a great weekend!