Agents work hard for the money

Some of the Nov. 4 letters, “The Brave New World of Realty?” [responding to the Oct. 28 story “They Mean Business,” on agent practices], were simply stunning and so misinformed.

My husband has been a real estate agent since 1985. He decided years ago that driving around buyers was not a good use of his time. The agent can end up having spent months with them and receiving not one cent for his time. It’s hard to think of any field where this is the case.

Several times, buyers he had a relationship with walked into an open house and ended up buying from the listing broker there. It’s a loss of time and zero income.

As for sellers unwilling to heed their broker’s advice and price the house to sell in today’s market: What often happens is that sellers switch to another broker after months of good advice from broker No. 1. Then they seem to heed broker No. 2’s advice to price to actually sell, and bingo, the house sells at the price the original broker advised.

It’s quite disheartening, not to mention economically disastrous, for the brokers who work as hard as my husband does.

Realtors are not cranky because now they have to work -- what a distorted view of the profession. If anyone thinks that real estate sales is a snap and so profitable, they should join the ranks of California’s 500,000 Realtors.

Pearl Taylor

Sherman Oaks