Remember when Craig’s List was a useful tool in your real estate search? You could actually find sellers looking for buyers, a nice little FSBO marketplace.
Then the Realtors discovered CL and started wallpapering it with all their MLS "listings". The number of daily posts increased at least 10 fold and became unmanageable to sift through, homes were reposted daily, and the whole concept of a Craig’s List Community, the whole reason Craig’s List exists, was lost. (you can now search for agent or owner postings)
Anyone who has ever used CL knows who the worst offender is - "Kristina". 4 or 5 postings a day, ALL CAPS, weird ampersands stars and symbols, "just listed" for months on end, "best deal", "below market", "won’t last". If you enter "kristina" into the search bar, you get 162 postings! All are spaced out to meet CL rules, and all show the inability to move the listings.
When I get really bored or pissed off, I find poking sticks at Realtors good therapy, and Kristina has gotten her share of rib jabs from me:
- Non-disclosure of her property ownership in many listings.
- Posting listings from other agents at her brokerage to drum up business.
- Posting listings she has absolutely nothing to do with from other brokerages to drum up referrals.
- Not listing, or mis-listing property addresses to hinder public records searches.
I should have saved some of her responses for your enjoyment. Suffice it to say they did not bring an air of professionalism to the discourse, or to her chosen profession. Lunatic rants might be a better description of the responses I received to my criticisms.
Oh wait, did I mention she and her husband were also investors? They managed over a few years to assemble the second ickiest portfolio of properties I have ever seen (search Nick or Gita Kavishi for a real rubber glove experience). Here are their NODs for the last 2 months: 535 Nicia, 9105 Red Baron, 612 W. Plumb, 11508 Sitka, 11675 Fir, 3815 Petrel, and 6580 Fern. There are a few other properties to follow shortly.
Silly, puritanical me, but I expect a "Real Estate Executive of Northern Nevada" to actually be one and act like one, to understand the market as a professional, and to serve their clients on either side of the deal as one. The Kristina has done none of these, and has demeaned whatever little credibility here industry still holds. So STOMP. I feel better, but I’ll have to clean my shoes off now. Edelmira? STOMP. Barnes Group? STOMP. 50 other industry professionals holding 300 or more default properties? STOMP.
Do you have other STOMP candidates?
2 comments
What a horrific posting. I heard this afternoon a friend who had a wedding in TX, prepaid because the place (reception and ceremony) was giving a “half off” type offer for full cash upfront payment type buyers. She found out 2 weeks before her own wedding that the place had BK’d. She lost her money, her deposit, her full payment, many nerves, etc etc, to a person/persons who KNEW themselves to be imminently involved in a BK, but took her money anyway. (she found alternative digs and got married in the 2 weeks she had, and made lemondade from the lemons, but stilllll…)
Know there is a “special” place in hell for those who knowingly defraud others out of the time of their lives or money of their hard work efforts, in return for a few weeks of holding creditors at bay. THere’s a special place in hell for unscrupulous mortgage lenders, realtors, sellers, etc who act in a way to screw others.
So, lets all clean up our act(s) and make good without delay. Each of us, right now, take a moment at my admonishment to re-think your professional ethics, to re-up your standards, and to watch out for the little guy, the unsuspecting, the poor, the vulnerable, so you can do an honorable thing and reap rewards instead. Keep it clean, professional, honorable, regardless the financial ‘cost’.
A little off topic….
Once I bought a refrigerator, when the refrigerator arrived it wasn’t the one I had ordered, but the next level up!
Well I knew it and kept my moth shut. To this day I still feel guilty as hell for not saying anything.
Oh and the ice maker which was the upgraded option was nothing but trouble after a couple years. In the end I probably lost any aparrent savings!