Mohave County Realtors
April 18th, 2008I am totally disgusted with the efforts of the mohave county realtors board to prevent anyone from looking for a home in this county. They continue to make it nearly impossible. I feel no empathy for the local realtors based on their efforts against buyers.
In the nearby states (and for that matter 99% of the country) realtors attempt to make their properties visible to as many potential buyers as possible.
But not our local realtors board. They are so egotistical that they think people are going to fight to find a home here rather than just go somewhere that the realtors actually want to sell a home.
They managed last year to remove all addresses from realtor.com, a public site that millions of people use. A site which displays addresses for California and Las Vegas and most of the rest of the country. The explanation I got at the time from a realtor was that it was dangerous to display the address.
So apparently California and Nevada and the rest of Arizona are considerably safer than Mohave county. In fact we apparently are more dangerous than 99% of the country, it is not safe to let buyers here find out addresses. Heaven knows what we might do with them. Buyers might actually find a house they are interested in purchasing and they still have to go through a realtor to view or purchase a home. I’m not sure what the boards real objective is here. Their egos outway their concern for sellers and/or buyers.
Realtors don’t advertise in the paper here. We have a “homes for sale” book, but very few realtors advertise in it. They don’t allow people to use the internet to find out properties for sale, every site that tries is stopped. If I was trying to sell a house here, I would wonder exactly why I use a realtor.
I could get the information out there in multiple places and save the realtor fee. I don’t see that the local realtors really want to sell homes, they are still stuck in the “everyone wants to live here, millions of baby boomers are moving here” stage.
I’m sure they are working on getting signs outlawed at this very moment. Because now, if you don’t care about the gas, you can drive around the areas you are interested in and see most of what’s for sale. I’m sure the board will want to nip that option in the bud.
The last straw happened last week. My realtor subscribes to a service that is similar to zip realty, a service buyers in many areas including California, have access to. Zip realty, however, is public and anyone can sign up, with or without a realtor. You can find out everything about properties in an area you are interested in. You can save info on properties and keep track of them. There are dozens of sites like this in other areas, zip just happens to be one of the largest and most well known.
The site my realtor uses is only available for someone working with a realtor, it is not a public site. According to my realtor, there is no cost to her to use the site. The buyers access expires every month or so and and if your realtor does not send you emails of new listings, you cannot view a new listing.
It was a great service that a realtor could provide to a potential buyer. You could save properties that you were interested in following and be notified every time something changed or pictures were added. You could search by a street name if you were interested in seeing what was available on a certain street. You could look up mls numbers from realtor.com and find out where a property was.
Last week the addresses were removed from the site, including the addresses that were on properties that I had saved. The directions to the properties were also removed, as well as the map views. Now the site is basically useless to a buyer.
I know the owners of the site wouldn’t take information off unless they were required to by the local board of realtors. So once again the local board of realtors has squashed an attempt by buyers to find out what is available in this county. They have taken what was a great tool for realtors/buyers and made it useless. All apparently in the name of “we don’t want our info “given away”".
I knew this was probably coming, based on a local board member trying to get the name of the site out of me a while back. He acted like I was doing something illegal by having access to the addresses of properties for sale. It probably took a little effort on their part, but they apparently figured it out and they’ve managed to get rid of another buyers/realtors tool. Congratulations TT, you’ve saved the home sellers from possibly getting interest in their homes.
Just when I thought, based on falling prices and foreclosures available, that I might actually be able to find a home that suits our needs. The local board of realtors has struck again. They are determined to get rid of those pesky potential buyers and I’m about to let them have their way. It’s just too much work trying to find out what’s available in this county, so they win. Between that and the anti senior/retirees sentiment expressed by the local realtors, why anyone would choose to retire here anymore is beyond me. If the realtors have any say in this, and apparently they do, we are obviously not welcome.
And sellers, you might want to rethink having a local realtor try to sell your home. They are determined to not allow anyone to even know it’s for sale.
