Real-Estate Agents Are Babysitting Rats
Jonathan Marks makes his living as a real-estate agent. Lately, he’s been babysitting rats.
With the housing market in a dive and homes lingering unsold for months, the relationship between real-estate agents and their clients is beginning to change. Both buyers and sellers are demanding more from their brokers, and getting it.
Jim Perry, an agent in St. Helena, Calif., spent most of an afternoon vacuuming up thousands of flies from one client’s guest house.
Mary Hartley, in Albany, Ore., organized a garage sale for one seller, spent 10 hours painting the side of the house for another and recently enlisted her grandchildren to help clean out the debris in a crawl space for a third.
And to help Sandra Le Buhn sell her $1.2 million, four-bedroom home in Mill Valley, Calif., Mr. Marks agreed to board her nine-year-old daughter’s cherished brown-and-white rats, Zack and Cody, who had been living in a cage in the bathtub.
During the boom times just two years ago, real-estate agents didn’t have to do much more than post a house on the multiple listing service and watch the bids roll in. But the dynamic is changing.
Indeed, Realtors are really having a hard time selling homes now.
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