There is a possibility that Hubby will be transferred to Johannesburg in the next few months and, if it happens, I will be going too.
Obviously, if you are planning to move to another city, the first thing you need to do is find a place to live. This being the era of the internet, we hit the net looking for suitable properties…and came across several that might suit.
Since we found the properties on the net and all of the agents repping the properties have email addresses, I sent them emails asking that they contact me regarding those properties. One would think that in a depressed property market, agents would be answering my emails within minutes of my sending them, right? Agents are hungry right now because the staggering rise in interest rates and a concurrent national tightening of credit-worthiness criteria has put the property market into a severe slump, with houses losing as much as 25% of the value in the last year.
So why, when a live one pops up and says “Please contact me ASAP regarding your listing #2234567890. We are anticipating a transfer to your area and need to find a home,” am I getting no responses”
I seriously don’t get it. If you are selling something expensive for which demand has precipitously fallen off and a buyer says “I want one…contact me!” wouldn’t you burn rubber trying to get in touch? Why don’t these people want to sell those houses?
A possible excuse is that they haven’t checked their email. Well, why not? It has been two days since I last sent mails out…shouldn’t they be checking at least once per day? And since I am out of town, doesn’t it make sense that I will want to conduct business via the net, where I can receive pictures and send details of my needs until such time that we’ve found a couple of places to actually fly up to see?
These people literally have someone coming to them saying “take my money…please!” and are not responding!
What do I have to do to get a pro-active agent who really wants to sell me a house??
Have you tried having a look through Private Property (www.privateproperty.co.za).
ReplyDeletePerhaps the actual owners of the houses might be more keen to sell you their house :-)
I wonder if they see you as desperate and in this depressed market aren't all that anxious to sell to someone who they might perceive as unable to afford what they are looking at. Most real estate agents aren't very scrupulous I have found, and need gentle coaxing to spark their interest. You might need to send more than one email. Or, and this is another random thought, maybe your email has gone into their spam folder and they never saw it. Just a thought.
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