I generally have a different opinion. I am somewhat in the industry (construction side) and I feel that generally most realtors dont really have much knowledge of what they are selling. Furthermore, it is relatively easy to get a real estate license (at least where I live) and the handful of acquaintances that have gotten their license really dont know more than the average person.
I actually find the lack of knowledge of most realtors very surprising (not that there arent some really good ones out there). When we were working with one to find a home, we would walk into a place and our realtor would look through the listing sheet and be like "oooh they supposedly have a good quality insulation in their walls", I would then need to explain to him what an R value means and that no they truly didnt have good insulation and what they were using as a marketing point was in fact the minimum required by code. I would then point out a few other items (jump ducts, hollow core doors, etc) that would make me feel like I was walking into a Habitat for Humanity type of home, not a $600,000+ residence.
Buying a home is the largest single investment people are likely to make in their lifetime and they have almost 0 knowledge about what they are buying and do almost no research into it other than the location. They then rely on input from someone regarding what they are buying that has very little additional information other than comparable sales and "knowledge" of the market. I wrote a business plan a little while around this, but never took past just putting some ideas on paper.
This is so true. Not only do they typically not know anything more about nay given home that you, the buyer, do. If they are on the selling side they will also outright lie about home features. I experienced this so many times on houses I visited and even on the house I ultimately purchased.
You just have you shrug your shoulders and fix whatever they misrepresented.
In my state you should file a complaint against that agent with the department/office that oversees real estate licensing. And you might be eligible to be compensated for the agents misrepresentations if you can prove them.
I'd love to. Some of the things seem difficult to prove. Such as
> Welcome Home!!! Take a seat on the PORCH SWING on your COVERED DECK and enjoy the Fall Season! Come inside this cozy home and view it's OPEN FLOOR PLAN [calling this open floor plan is a big stretch], Original HARDWOOD Floors [and they are destroyed as a result. Water damage. literally cut through to put in a furnace in the basement in one place. Covered by a carpet in the living room and destroyed as a result] and FRESH Neutral Paint. Two bedrooms and a LARGE full bath [probably as small as it gets while still being a full bath] on the Main Floor with a SUNNY eat-in Kitchen and Conveniently located MUDROOM, additional bedroom/office in the basement [not legally a bedroom]. This home features Updated ELECTRICAL [in some places sure. Half the house is still crappy old cloth wrapped wire], Updated PLUMBING throughout, Living Room is WIRED for SURROUND SOUND, [broken] SPRINKLER SYSTEM and NEW Roof with a LIFETIME transferrable Warranty! Detached Garage has HEAT & A/C, Wired for Cable and LAN line [a CAT5 cable that terminates in the floor and is not accessible to be hooked up to anything because it's in the floor!], has Electric [electricity to the building no where near code because it is fed from two sources] and a HUGE Attic space to Provide LOTS of EXTRA STORAGE. This home has a Private COVERED PATIO in the back where you can relax and enjoy YOUR NEW HOME!
There was more in the listing than this but that's just the basic bio.
I guess I'm looking for different expertise. I wouldn't trust them to have any building knowledge. I want them to know the local market. I bought a house in Los Angeles a few years ago. Because everything is so expensive we were fairly open to different areas in a radius around our jobs. It was easy to overlook neighborhoods that were a good fit just by looking at a map of house sales. I reached out to a few realtors in different parts of town. They could help answer questions about schools (and charter schools), what was low and high for the neighborhood, and other things I could find out myself, but would take too much time if I did it for a dozen neighborhoods.
They also were really helpful in scheduling walkthroughs before the house would go on the market, and scheduling all of the inspections--they also offered to be on site if I couldn't make it.
I also think they keep the sale rational when either side can get too sentimental. After inspectors found a few, minor things, the seller only offered to address them after adding another 5k onto the price (at no point was 'as-is' mentioned). This was after a few other petty things from the seller and I considered walking away. The house had been in escrow with no backup bids before we showed up. So I wouldn't be surprised if that happened last time, too.
When I was buying my house every time I asked a seller's agent a question about a house their answer was "I don't know." Every single damn time! If it wasn't written on the MLS they don't have a clue. That's even assuming the seller's agent was even physically there for the showing, only a few were.
My loan agent also told us that the taxes listed on the MLS were almost always flat out wrong so he always has to ignore the MLS and call the town when drafting up mortgages. I can't help but wonder if that's not so accidental. The taxes listed on the MLS for the house I ended up buying were wrong, for what its worth. Two municipals tax my house and the MLS only listed the tax for one of them.
That is a tough one. I have been in the industry for 10+ years and a lot of it in the higher end custom home side. To me a couple of things that standout as super cheap are jump ducts (basically they didnt bother to put a return air duct in a room and just put a whole in a wall with grills on either side to allow air transfer), hollow core interior doors (you can hear/feel the difference if you knock on a hollow core door versus a solid door), all stucco exterior (cheapest clading material where I live), sometimes upper floor water pressure is almost non-existent and they dont put in a booster pump, and on and on... I feel like it really varies from project to project. I have seen some where they actually spent a decent amount on the cabinet drawer/door fronts, but then didnt bother to spend a couple of hundred more on good undermount drawer guides. Others where they didnt bother to think about layout/flow in a kitchen (aka the island looks great, but if I open my fridge I cant squeeze by the island and the door to actually get anything out of it). I think generally a lot of what people are trying to build today qualifies as "modern" but to me it just looks/feels cheap. To truly do modern well is very expensive. I dont particularly like the look, but thats just my opinion.
Older construction is another area entirely. When flipping houses became popular a lot of people got into the industry who didnt know what they were doing, or they went about trying to do it as quick and cheaply as possible. I have heard that the less you know about a place you are trying to flip the better. AKA if I dont open up any walls to see if the electrical doesnt actually meet code, then I dont have to spend a bunch of money replacing it! Or I didnt get a structural engineer to look at the foundation so I dont know if there are any issues with it and therefore I dont need to disclose anything to a potential buyer.
I actually find the lack of knowledge of most realtors very surprising (not that there arent some really good ones out there). When we were working with one to find a home, we would walk into a place and our realtor would look through the listing sheet and be like "oooh they supposedly have a good quality insulation in their walls", I would then need to explain to him what an R value means and that no they truly didnt have good insulation and what they were using as a marketing point was in fact the minimum required by code. I would then point out a few other items (jump ducts, hollow core doors, etc) that would make me feel like I was walking into a Habitat for Humanity type of home, not a $600,000+ residence.
Buying a home is the largest single investment people are likely to make in their lifetime and they have almost 0 knowledge about what they are buying and do almost no research into it other than the location. They then rely on input from someone regarding what they are buying that has very little additional information other than comparable sales and "knowledge" of the market. I wrote a business plan a little while around this, but never took past just putting some ideas on paper.