Weichert Realtors

It would be an understatement to say I’m not a fan of the Weichert realtor who assisted us when we rented a property in Bartlett last July, stemming from this office. I don’t want to name names here, particularly because I found this man to be one of the most incompetent I’ve ever met, so I’ll refer to him here out as The Realtor.
We looked at several properties online at Weichert’s web site, and finally used the online «make an appointment» feature to attempt to do just that: make an appointment. Nothing happened. Apparently, when I submit all of my contact details on Weichert’s web site, including my availability and telephone number, an automatic email is sent with the name and contact details of a realtor, whom I am then supposed to call. No one from Weichert ever contacted me (and I went through this process three times). I finally ended up calling The Realtor myself. So much for the online appointment system.
The Realtor rather reluctantly agreed to meet with us on Saturday morning, but not before letting us know just how busy he was that day. He could squeeze us in at 9:30 a.m. and we could look at two properties in Bartlett before 10:00 a.m. when I presume he had another appointment. He asked no questions at all about what we were looking for or whether we might be interested in buying down the road… questions I suspect most good realtors do ask, as they are, after all, trying to make a sale.
So we piled the kids in the car early Saturday morning and drove from the city to the suburbs. The Realtor shook my partner’s hand without a smile, but barely acknowledged my presence at all. In fact, he didn’t even ask for my name. And of course, no questions asked about our house hunting activities or interests. Instead, The Realtor simply unlocked the front door and ushered us into the house, where we roamed, unattended. Now I don’t mind wandering the house by myself — in fact, I rather prefer it — but coupled with his disinterest and unfriendliness, I took The Realtor’s decision to stand at the front door until we were ready to leave as a sign of laziness.
I’ll cut to the second half of this story now. We decided to rent the second house we looked at, despite the fact it was filthy and badly decorated. Our attempts to negotiate with the landlord through The Realtor were completely pointless. We discovered, much later, that he didn’t even bother asking the landlord many of our questions. The Realtor assured us that the landlord would not clean the house before move-​in (it was, the cleaning woman WE hired said, the dirtiest house she had ever seen), nor would he fix any broken screens or windows. The house was «as-​is.» Being the dopes that we are, we agreed to rent it anyway.
Signing the lease with The Realtor was a complete joke. He provided us with a blank lease and told us to fill it out — so we were actually checking things we would/​would not be required to do, and things the landlords would/​would not be required to do. And while we were trying to ask The Realtor questions about the lease, having never actually filled one out before, he kept pressuring us for the check ($) for a background check! The irony is, when we finally sent the lease back to The Realtor, he suddenly told us that the landlord had completed one he would like us to sign. Um yes, that is actually the way it’s supposed to work in the first place!
Best of all, his chauvinism continued throughout the process. Although I was actually the one calling/​emailing most of the time, he continued to address his responses to my partner, not me. It was as though I was «just the wife» and not an important part of the process.
And once the lease was signed, The Realtor went MIA. He passed us on to some other realtor, who showed up with a set of keys and a garage door opener. I ran into The Realtor again on election day, and he didn’t even recognize me. I would guess that with the current economic downturn, realtors would want to hang on to a client — especially us, as we told him we planned to buy in a year. But obviously not! And so, I won’t be using Weichert again, and would encourage you to look elsewhere too.