1st of December 2005:When I lost the… “chance of my life” | Ilias Papageorgiadis’ blog for Real Estate in Romania (and not only)

1st of December 2005:
When I lost the… “chance of my life”

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Part 3 (for part 1, please press here, for part 2, please press here)

“The Best opportunities! (but not for us ofcourse)”
      The answer was simple. They said they were collaborating with many other agencies, but the truth was that they were simply copying from the internet any possible offer and presenting to their clients (or collaborators like me). If they would find someone to “fish”, then they were contacting the owner or agent, informing that they have a client and they wanted the papers and also a good commission from the deal. Hundreds, thousands of agents have survived like this for more than a decade in Romanian market, adding to it the sophisticated characteristic of “chaos” (or “pluralism”).
      Sweating from the very high temperature of the room (no wonder why the man was in his underwear and still sweating…), having problem to bare the very ugly smell and very hungry, I decided to end the long lasting discussion, by simplifying things: “Ok, ladies. Let us stay to these 4 cases and forger the other 200 that we saw. Which one of them would you buy, if you were in my position?” They looked at each other and both of them turned their heads back to me, smiling… Their smile was similar to the one we have when a five years old boy asks us a silly question…
      “All of them are the best opportunities that you can find in the market today” they replied. “Ok, which one of them would you buy if you were in my position? Which one of these opportunities would you desire to have for sure?” “But we don’t have money…” said one of them and the other one continued: “If we had money, you think we would be here now?” and the first one rebounded… “these are for you, the foreigners, I would never invest my money on any of these“. “And what should I do, if I invest?” “I don’t know, you know better”.
      Somewhere at that point our discussion ended. The husband had stood up and he was looking at me with the politeness and kindness of someone who sees in front of him the one who stole all his money… I was escorted to the door and I arrived home feeling dizzy…

The “big” agency…
      I decided to leave them relax one day after the shock of my visit and I discussed over the phone with one of the ladies two days after. I told her that I would like to go and visit the properties which I chose, so as to be able to present them to my clients when would come next week. “Why do you want to lose your time and ours? When they come, we go all together”. “But if I don’t know, how I will show them?” She did not find a strong argument so as to make me change my business ethics. So I arrived in front to the next surprise, when I insisted to see the first property in the list: “You know, Greek mister… we have this one from another agency we collaborate with’. “Good, so organize with them to go and see the property”. She tried hard to prevent me, telling me all kinds of excuses, but in the end I was stubborn: “Either I go to see the property, or our collaboration ends NOW”.
      The meeting was scheduled for next week. I was supposed to go to a property “at the area of Buftea” with a price of 0,5 euro / sq.m. Buftea is at the Northern part of Ilfov, an area with major historical value and not only. Next morning found me walking towards the office of this “big” company. Big indeed, having used all possible marketing tricks to establish their position over the last years. The company exists today too and in the period 2004 - 2008 was one of the top in Romania, having earned a great market share and exposure. I entered in a nice office, where a polite secretary led me to one of the meeting rooms. So, this was the office of the company “with which the ladies were collaborating”…
      Well, this was the official theory, because in reality I understood that this company had nothing to do with the case, an agent of them “once told to the lady something”… This was the information I received by the agent directly. But I was there already so I thought “why not to go anyway?”

1st of December 2005:
When I lost the… “chance of my life”

Part 3 (for part 1, please press here, for part 2, please press here)

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