Should I do business with this agent?

[Kenan Karalic]

Hello Real-Estate agents,

Recently I connected with a real-estate agent (let's call him RA #1) in my local community who was very professional and responsive to my questions and would actively send me lists of properties from the MLS that matched my criteria.

During our most recent correspondence, I asked him to obtain for me a list of rental comps in my area in order to analyze a few deals I was interested in. A day later I received a reply from his business partner (RA #2) who had done the work for him. I didn't have any issues with that...but then I took something caught my eye. At the very bottom of the email, I saw that the RA #1 had forwarded my initial request for rental comps to RA #2 and wrote in his email "hey bro, let's sell this dude a property before I leave". That raised a number of red flags.

I understand that RA's make money from the commission of any property they are involved in buying or selling, but seeing this portion of the email just made me pause and further consider whether or not I should be doing business with this person.

Is this normal sales talk? Do I look for someone else?

Any advice is appreciated.

[Steve B.]

Obviously that was indiscreet but all agents want to sell you a property so I wouldn't preclude him just on that basis.

I think it's bad practice to rely on any RE agent for rent comps, they are inheiranty biased and likely to highball rent comps in my experiece.  There are a few good online resources for rent comps as well as a couple crappy ones.   Between Zillow, hotpads, rentrange, and good ol' Craigslist you can do a reasonable job with just your own due diligence.