Just a sharing with fellow agents and friends here.
Recently I had encounter a few agent impersonating to be buyer just for the sake of viewing your property and hijacking your listing.
I really wonder why they would do such thing, not that there is only a few listing left in this world and everybody is fighting to close the same deal.
My very common question when they inquire about a property would be to find out at least the following:
- Whether they had actually went to the area
- Are they familiar with that particular area
- Where are they working/studying and why they would want to purchase / rent that particular area
- Are they buying this property for themselves or they are interested in co-agency.
In many case, these are the answer I gotten from the probing:
- I am not familiar with that area
- Which area does your listing belongs to, which block and which floor, do you have the unit number
- Not working nearby but interested to buy this because it is cheap and very far from work place
- Oh, no no no, I am not an agent, I am a normal buyer, and this is my contact number bla bla bla
Obviously even as a seller you would not disclose so many information, what if the person tried to rob your place at the end of the day.
After the call, whenever I in doubt, I always perform phone number check in Facebook and Google (these are some very friendly tool that you could use), if this hits to a dead end, get your friend to help call the person, to inquire on whether they have a property for sale or so (if the person answered, that listing is no longer available, there you go, you caught your culprit)
I am not sure why they would like to be such dishonest to other fellow agent, but from my experience, I would add them to Agent Black List Database and have the person phone number blocked for good to prevent further damages.
Not sure whether you had actually encounter such event in your past, to me RENs are supposed to be professionals just like Lawyers, Doctors etc... but just because of a few bad apple, at the end of the day, it happened to spoil the whole basket of apples in it.
