Do I Misunderstand the Role of My Realtor?

[Lee Self]

So I'm about to make an offer on my first deal and I'm very excited. I asked a friend of mine who is a realtor in my market to assist me, or to refer me to someone who would handle a deal of this smaller size (it's currently priced at $48k, and my friend typically sells $300k+ homes). He was more than willing to help me out himself, and about a week ago we got to work.

I have to confess that I either had a serious misunderstanding about the role of a realtor, or else the size of the deal is making my friend not put much effort into this. To start with, I told my friend what I was looking for:

A condo or single family home that needed cosmetic work but was otherwise solid and in a decent neighborhood. Monthly rent at least 1% of purchase price. I also gave him my budget.

I guess what I was anticipating was that the realtor would assist me in combing through listings to find solid possibilities. Instead, he signed me up for his listing service and told me to let him know when I found something I liked and we would tour it. When we did tour properties, he had no insights on them whatsoever. As an example, we were viewing a condo in a very upscale part of the city, but the condo community itself was very low price. I asked him why these condos would be so inexpensive compared to everything else for miles around, and his response was "Well, it could be because of a lot of things....like square feet." These condos were almost 1300 sq ft, which is larger than almost all of the other condos in the area. 

So as far as locating properties, I felt like I could've just done fine on my own looking at listings through redfin or realtor.com and setting up showings. He wasn't helping me search and couldn't tell me anything useful about what I was seeing.

Now we are about to make an offer. I've gone over my numbers with my friend on why I like the deal, and exactly what I would like to get it for. In the same email, I asked how we should determine what our first offer will be. His only response was a single sentence, "We determine the initial offer based on where we want to end up while leaving room for some negotiation."

Well, thank you for that definition of negotiation. Again, I could have reached that conclusion totally on my own. Is where I want to end up reasonable? How do we determine how much room to leave for negotiation? What are strategies for feeling out the other side to see how desperate they are to sell? These were questions that I had hoped someone with decades of experience in this real estate market could provide me insights to.

Am I just expecting too much from my realtor? I certainly don't expect him to do all the work. I've crunched my own numbers, determined my own budget, and determined very particular criteria for what I'm looking for. I expected to comb through the listings, and expected both of us to come to the table with some options. I expected that based on his experience and my criteria, we could put our heads together and find the right option. I expected that based on my budget and his negotiating experience, we would determine the correct price to buy it and the right negotiating strategy. Instead, I feel like he's just a gatekeeper of sorts: just an extra official step I need to go through to close the deal without bringing anything really concrete to the table.

[Jon Holdman]

IMHO, yes, you have unrealistic expectations of a real estate agent.  Their job is to get you through the buying process.  That means getting listings, viewing properties, writing offers, getting an offer accepted, and then shepherding that offer though the closing process.  An agent is not going to help you analyze properties.

Those are not criteria an agent can search on:

1. needed cosmetic work - no way for an agent to search on this, nor is even clear with "cosmetic work" would be.
2. otherwise solid - what does that mean?  Again, not a search criteria
3. decent neighborhood - what does that mean?
4. rent at least 1% of purchase price - not a search criteria

These are things a agent can search on:

1. condo or single family
2. budget

So, its up to you to turn those non-searchable criteria into something the agent can actually use.  Number 1 and 2 are out the door.  There's no way to figure this out without looking at the place.  Maybe from pictures, but even that's shaky.  And the agent is NOT going to look through the pictures and determine what work is needed.  Number 3 and 4 are ones that you need to research and identify locations.  I've always done this by zip code, but there may be other factors and search criteria.  

So, you should figure out what areas you want to target then have the agent produce listings for those areas, SFRs and condos, under your target price.  That's something an agent can do.  Then YOU need to look through those listings and identify which ones to look at.  The agent will set up viewings.  Go look.  Do your own evaluation of the properties.  Decide which ones you like and what to offer.  The agent can help you with comps.   Then write offers.

What you describe would be reasonable expectations for a business partner.  But not for an agent.