Here I go again, giving incompetent agents good free publicity. Perhaps I will win a Nobel Peace Prize – and to be honest, I really do subscribe to the theroy that there is no such thing as bad publicity. I won’t, however, hold my breath for a thank you note from this bone head.
A couple of weeks ago, we were contacted by a full on crazy woman – Linda Grossman of Keller Williams in McKinney, Texas. As you know, we work mainly in the higher end market, properties of one million or more. She was a member of Keller Williams Luxury Homes devision, however, being in McKinney she assured me that luxury was slightly under the one million market. Not true, there are many multi-million dollar homes in beautiful McKinney, but she had barely seen the interior of or listed any.
Every other word she said was luxury or luxe. She was very impressed with herself and this designation. Red flag number one. It took me less then three clicks to find out that to be bestowed as a Keller Williams Luxury agent it takes a minimum of effort that could be achieved buy anyone who had gotten the GED in their 30’s, become an agent and just showed up at the office enough to close a few transactions and pay Keller Williams a handsome fee – see for yourself.
I had an Realtor friend look up her seller and buyer rep history. FAR FROM LUXURY. Red flag number two. Sellers, FYI, if you want a proven luxury Realtor go with Allie Beth Allman (locally) or Sotheby’s International Realty (world wide). These people know luxury homes, neighborhoods and the luxury market over all. Linda “Hillbilly” Grossman (as we started calling her) sounded like Fran Drescher from the television show “The Nanny” – always waving her arms and saying “luxury” and “wonderful” and working that blackberry phone like she was the press secretary for President Obama.
She had to have the photos right away, immediately, I told her it would be a two day turn around. She balked but agreed. As the delivery time was counting down my email and phone was blowing up demanding “where are the photos?”. A legitimate request, in this business delivery is essential.
30 hours after she had been sent the photos I got an email from her asking how many photos were in the zipped file I sent her. She had not even opened it. This wacko is really racking up some red flags brothers and sisters.
She also wanted her Virtual Movie Tour to include some of the “luxury sights of the area”, one being a church. This is when our relationship really started to deteriorate. Having a 17 year background in real estate and real estate marketing, I advised her that including a church in real estate marketing materials was, well…. illegal. Fearing she was going to want me to include a text box that said “WHITES ONLY” I started to distance myself from her but she was more and more insistent that the church be included in the video “because everyone up here knows it”.
I am holding a box full of Hillbilly Grossman red flags now.
I kept making adjustments to the video to test my customer service skills and keep the client happy (although I did refuse the church inclusion) but once I had reached the point where I was making about .37 cents an hour I told her to just tell me what she wanted, frame by frame, and I would make it happen. I didn’t have to audition this hard for the Ice Capades.
Did I mention it took her and her assistant two days to figure out how to open a zip file?
Anyway, above is version one of the video, the one she gave me over 27 emailed corrections. For those of you with a strong faith, I apologize, it does not include a church, but any fool right out of real estate school knows that is a marketing NO – NO. When I watch the video I see a handsome home and feel sorry for the seller that does not get to use this Virtual Movie Tour as a marketing tool, yes, she refused to use it. I “pray” her communication skills are better with co-op agents and buyers than they were with me.
Oh, and a quick follow up – I heard from a friend of a friend (the other photographer she works with that is nice to her face, takes her money and goes on about how he dislikes working with her) that she is a complete boozler. This explains some of her absolutely crazy behavior. My photographer said more than once she called him drunk late at night and when he hung up he told his wife “she wont remember that conversation in the morning”. Sure enough, she called the next day saying the same thing not remembering the conversation. I see 12 steps in her near future.
****UPDATE****
It seems Hillbilly Grossman has lost that loving feeling for McKinney and become a Frisco Star. We wish her new office mates and the residence of Frisco the best of luck.