Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market
I’m happy to see the deluge of census bureau calls has finally stopped. I’ve learned that when a census bureau representative wants answers, they take no prisoners. There’s no question that many of the calls I’ve received the last month have been extremely demanding and the callers wouldn’t accept that I wouldn’t be able to assist them. I guess they see my sign in the yard, realize I have more information on that home than just about anyone outside of the seller and they’re not going to go away quietly. The problem is that I don’t know any real estate who would answer personal questions about their sellers when it comes to whether a home was vacant on a given date, whether the home is currently occupied, etc. Just imagine the problems giving out that information to a stranger over the phone could cause.
The first call I received, I was really caught off guard. The caller asked if the home were occupied on a given date and I told the lady that is not a question that I’m authorized to answer. That didn’t satisfy her and since I understand that gathering accurate census info is important, I told the caller to give me her office number and I’d call to verify she was legit. If she was, I’d pass her contact info on to my client. I took the time to verify the agent was legitimate and I did pass her information on to my client. Although I didn’t ask for a response from my client, I sure got one. A VERY long voice mail from client asking who this person was, why they’d called me, how much information I’d given them, etc… (sigh). Although I felt I’d done the right thing, it definitely backfired on me.
The very next day, I received another call on another of my listings. I told that census bureau representative that I couldn’t be of assistance. The guy stated he was just doing his job and continued to put me through 20 questions. I finally had to hang up on him. I tried to be polite but this was becoming a complete waste of time and putting my relationship with my clients at risk was not an option. When more calls came in, I found that being firm right from the start that I couldn’t help them and that I wouldn’t divulge any info on the home or my client led the calls to end quickly. Lesson learned.
Posted by Jason A. Brown