High End Buyers "Dissed" by Las Vegas Realtor

With the current market for Las Vegas foreclosures, we are getting a lot of out of state enquiries on bank repossessions, auctions and short sales. Many of these requests are actually for high end Las Vegas homes where the foreclosures are not quite as prevalent, but where the buyer can really pick up some equity on distressed properties.

We received an enquiry last month from a Canadian couple who were looking to purchase Lake Las Vegas real estate. They were looking for a high end Las Vegas luxury property that they could use as a vacation home and they were planning on paying cash. One of our agents, Janet, was assigned to take them on a tour of potential homes.

Janet emailed the clients while they were still in Canada and sent them some listings to look over. They were able to narrow down their search and on the scheduled day Janet met with the buyers, who were very nice and very adamant about getting a real "deal." Since these are high end homes, Janet had arranged appointments with the listing agents on the ones they were interested in.

At the very first home Janet took the buyers to see, Mrs. Buyer got a funny look on her face when she saw the listing agent. She pulled Janet aside and asked for the agent's name. Janet told her, and as soon as she got the chance, Mrs. Buyer said to the agent, "Oh so YOU'RE Agent N." Of course the way she said it caused the listing agent to reply, "Yes, I am. Have we met before?"

"No," replied Mrs. Buyer. But you spoke to my husband on the phone the other day. I'd like to introduce you to Mr. Bottomfeeder." Agent N had to leave the room to compose himself when he realized what he had done.

As it turns out, like most Internet buyers these clients had been surfing the web and had talked to quite a few agents before deciding who they wanted to represent them. Evidently Mr. Buyer had talked to Agent N about a particular property and had asked if the sellers would consider a sales price quite a bit less than what the property was listed for. Unfortunately Agent N took umbrage and called Mr. Buyer a "bottomfeeder" and hung up on him.

Needless to say, the buyers were not interested in putting in an offer on Agent N's listing. But they are going to put an offer in on another home Janet showed them listed at over $6 million.

Who can blame a buyer for trying to get the best deal possible in today's market? And who are we as Las Vegas real estate agents to say that they should not give it a shot? We love it when we know we have gotten a smoking deal for one of our clients, and we are certainly not going to discourage them from doing so. Because Janet took their concerns seriously, she now has some loyal clients who know she truly has their best interests at heart. But Agent N, who insulted these same clients, lost out on a huge sale. Hopefully he learned a lesson, but at what a cost!