Mortgages and Agents

We moved a lot when I was a kid, and i've been involved in many property purchases of my own. One thing I've learned is that Realtors get paid a huge commission for each sale. The process isn't much unlike that of what a car salesman does. In that I would think selling a car takes more skill as a property pretty much sells itself. Another shark infested industry is that of mortgages. Banks obviously want your business, and mortgage brokers get in on the action too with none of the risk. All they do is play middle man for the financing and take a nice cheque for putting it all together. Their practice of lending to anyone finally came to an end when the financial crisis hit last year.

When I was 18 my parents hired an estate agent (we were living in London at the time) to sell our house. He had an assistant who basically did all the work. She showed the place an arranged everything on behalf of the agent who basically just used his well advertised name and face to list places. Anyways I was somewhat disgusted by how much he got paid for how little work he did.

The memorable part to that whole experience was that one day the assistant had finished showing our house and I came home well before my parents would get back. I gave the beautiful young assistant a tour of my room - Yes, we slept together! Unfortunately the home sold days later and I never got to repeat the experience with her. In fact I never saw her again. At 18 it was pretty cool that she was 7 years older than me, but now... I'm not sure I'd be thinking what I was then. I must admit though, I've often wondered about buying a place in her jurisdiction and possibly coming across her again!