Work From Home Couple

I know a bit about real estate: I’ve written about residential real estate for more than a decade, for newspapers and trade magazines. During this time, real estate agents — and everyone involved with the buying and selling of homes, actually — have been quick to remind me just how important they are.

Agents help buyers purchase homes for a fair price. They help negotiate with sellers. They … Well, I’m sure they do something else. I just don’t know what it is.

As the rains keep coming here in the Midwest, I have this to say in response to all those real estate agents: You’re wrong. You’re not important at all. In fact, you’re rather useless.

I say this because my basement is flooding today. Again. We’ve owned our little house for three years now. This is the fifth time our basement has flooded.

As you may or may not know, sellers are required to disclose when their homes have basements that flood. Our sellers did not disclose this. In fact, they checked a box on the sales contract that said their basement was dry.

Well, either they were incredibly fortunate during the eight years they live here or they’re liars. I opt for the second.

Fine. Problem is, not one of the real estate professionals who helped us buy this house has been able to help us remedy this situation. Our real estate agent did come over the day after our first flood and frowned, tsked and sighed. But she didn’t know what else to do. We contacted the real estate attorney the state of Illinois requires in every housing transaction only to be told by him that it’s probably not worth our time to try to prove in court that our sellers lied. The home inspector who’s supposed to help find things like this was quick to cover his own butt, saying quickly that it was a dry day when he did our inspection. I’ll make sure to schedule our next home inspection, should we buy again, during a deluge.

The frustrating thing is that none of these people — most of whom we paid to look out for our interests — have done a thing to help us now that we actually need them. Sure, they’re all peppy and “helpful” when they’re completing the routine tasks that go with the buying and selling of a home. But when you actually need them to do something they don’t do 1,000 times a day, they shrug their shoulders.

The advice we’ve gotten is that we should just suck it up and pay to have the basement waterproofed. That’s what we are going to do, unfortunately. It’s just a shame that people in the real estate industry are so useless. I guess it’s no surprise that the housing industry is falling apart. For years, the people who worked in it were unethical, corrupt, lazy and stupid. Of course the industry is going to fall apart.

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