Years ago, a Los Angeles-based couple hired my team and me to sell their New York City condo. It was once their home, but since they moved to LA for career reasons, they’d been renting it out and collecting income. Our task was to sell the apartment while the current tenant still lived there.
That tenant was a 40-something guy, and although nobody on my team ever met him in person, he was fine with our staging and sprucing up the property before we listed it, as well as showing the apartment to prospective buyers while he was at work. But he refused to clean up after himself, even while the condo was on the market, claiming that he hadn’t made his bed since he was in summer camp and wasn’t about to start now. Generally, tenants have no incentive to make a sale easy by keeping the home showing-ready, and this tenant was more difficult than usual. Every time I showed the property, I had to get there early to make the tenant’s bed, do his dishes and often put away his dirty clothes and shoes that were strewn haphazardly on the floor or flung over the back of a chair. Fortunately, the condo itself was in great condition and well-located in Tribeca, so it wasn’t on the market long enough for me to really develop my housekeeping skills.
The Real Job
It may come as a surprise, but I am far from the only real estate agent who has had to make beds, wash dishes and take on otherwise unexpected tasks to get a property sold. Most of us love the rush of making a deal and bringing good news to a client, so we do what needs to be done, even if it entails what other professionals might find undignified.
But the real job is far from what is depicted on reality television. It often seems like the public actually thinks an attractive agent opens the door, gives a quick house tour, negotiates astronomical numbers over the course of two phone calls, and voilà, here’s the commission. In marketing and social media, we often portray our job as effortless, as many service providers in any industry want their clients to believe. Many of us feel that it is our job to represent an aspirational lifestyle, claiming that, as an extension of the clients themselves, we will guide them into something bigger and better.
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Backstage Efforts
Before we show a property or negotiate a deal, it’s commonplace for us to supervise a home’s repair, dispose of excess debris, manage extensive staging and coordinate videographers and social media campaigns. The truth is that real estate agents work incredibly hard for our clients, and although the job does have rewarding moments (some of them even glamorous!), any agent can wax poetic about that one most unpleasant, embarrassing and even disgusting time in their career, all in the name of properly servicing the client and getting that deal across the finish line.
When I got my real estate license, making beds and flushing strangers’ toilets wasn’t on the test, but to sell that Tribeca condo, I had to arrive extra early for showing appointments because I never knew what I would find. And some of the most colorful stories pertain to the moments right before showings when the listing agent arrives and realizes that the property isn’t ready for visitors.
Early in her career in New York City, my business partner (and mother), Coldwell Banker Warburg broker June Gottlieb, recalls walking into an Upper West Side exclusive listing only to find “the seller in bed with an ashtray full of cigarette butts nestled in the duvet,” despite having given more than 24 hours’ notice for the showing. “After running around opening the windows, I had to practically tap dance in the hallway with the potential buyers while the seller threw her sweatpants on and snuck out the back door. And I wish I could tell you that this happened only once,” Gottlieb says. Eventually, she sold the apartment and now has more than one fumigator’s contact information in her Rolodex.
“I had a seller who wouldn’t remove an area rug that made the whole home smell like dirty dog,” says Sarah Schwartz, a real estate agent with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services in northeast Florida. When bringing a buyer she knew would love the house, Schwartz says she “got there first, moved the furniture, rolled up the rug and put it in the garage, sprayed the floor down, mopped the floor where the rug was, moved the furniture back in place and showed the home.” And that turned out to be her buyer.
Sometimes offensive odors are the least of it. “We had an unexpected showing once and the seller had left out her underwear and a sex toy,” says Glennda Baker, a broker with Coldwell Banker in Atlanta. “To say the seller and I were on an intimate basis after that is an understatement.”
[READ: Places You Forget to Clean in Your Home]
Going the Extra Mile
When one seller didn’t quite seem to understand what “as is” meant, Schwartz sprang into action. “I’d asked multiple times how packing and moving was going and every time they said it was great and almost finished,” she recalls. “But when I checked in on the house before the closing, they hadn’t packed much more than their clothes. So my husband and I went there with a U-Haul, loaded everything up, put some items in the yard and listed them on Craigslist for free, and donated and dumped everything else. But hey, we got it done.”
Although we pride ourselves on going that extra mile and we love the friendships with clients that can blossom after a successful deal, sometimes what our clients ask is more than eyebrow-raising. “Once I arrived at my listing for an open house, only to find that the toilet was backed up and my seller was otherwise engaged somewhere else from the evening before,” Baker says. “Rather than come home and deal with it, he wanted me to snake the toilet.”
[READ: What Do Real Estate Agents Do?]
Grit and Grins
Real estate is a highly competitive industry almost everywhere, and most agents work on commission only. Not only must we provide top-notch service, but most of us will do what’s necessary on behalf of our clients. We want to provide a smooth experience despite all the hurdles that seem to come up in just about every deal.
The truth is that even though we might win new business through slick self-promotion on platforms like Instagram (but really, does anyone need to see another overly polished video of a real estate agent fluffing a sofa cushion or walking down the street in expensive clothes while on the phone?), we prove our mettle to our clients (and ourselves) during the grittiest, trickiest and often most undignified moments on the job. And years later, we smile when recalling these moments because they’re funny and crazy and weird, but we did what needed to be done and proudly provided top-notch service.
Many agents will say that the job has gotten more difficult over the years, despite the fact that we try to make it look easy. Buyers used to have more imagination, so the prep work required of sellers has become increasingly onerous, and more often following a tug of war with the listing agent.
“Some sellers still have the mindset that they are going to get multiple offers for $100k over the asking price,” Schwartz says. “They don’t believe they need to do anything to their home to spruce it up or even clean it. So of course I’ve personally cleaned and used touch-up paint on multiple listings, and I do walk-throughs with the eyes of a buyer to see what sticks out to then correct it before going live.”
Making Connections
The most dynamic among us wear many hats: not just real estate adviser, marketing maven, quasi-decorator, and construction crew supervisor, but also sometimes tour guide, marriage counselor, psychologist, babysitter, dog walker or housekeeper.
While marketing, staging, minor construction and deal-making can be fun and exciting, we also spend extended periods of time with all sorts of personalities, and on the best days, it’s a fun and rewarding job. To say that real estate agents must be people pleasers is an understatement, and being always “on” is a major part of the job. We leave our judgment at the door and many of us, myself included, develop close relationships with our clients as we shepherd them into the next chapter of their lives.
We must maintain our cool even if our clients get emotional, but we often live vicariously through them, whether it’s excitement or disappointment during the intimately intense period of working together. Our diverse clientele brings excitement to our lives, and no days are the same. “One day you are working with a preacher,” Baker says, “and the next day you’re working with a porn star.”
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Behind the Scenes: The Unglamorous Side of Being a Real Estate Agent originally appeared on usnews.com
