Realtor Reputations, Is the industry raising the bar?

This blog was originally a comment but I got so long winded about it take I thought I should blog it.

I am a real estate investor and have used realtors quite a lot in resent years to find properties. They save me time in locating and buying. The ones I currently use are hard working, ambitious, knowledgeable, and talented and connected well in the industry. I cannot say enough good and I treat the relationship as gold.

That being said for every 1 amazing realtor there are 10 or more boneheads. The ones with dollar signs in their eyes, lazy, greedy, self interested, lacking knowledge and hurting their clients best interests.

My first year in the business I was a renovate and flip guy and I was working with the first realtor that treated me with a little respect and didn't act like they knew everything there is to know about real estate. I connot emphasize this enough when I say I found 6 properties that year, told him what the offer should look like and go get it. I got tired of having to screen the properties and do the things I thought a realtor was suppose to do. The question of what do I pay you for, and realtors are upset about cutting commissions?

The next realtor riped me off on 3 deals by putting the sellers interests before mine. My mistake in paying too much, but like a used car salesman sold me a deal, boy did I feel dirty and used.

Then I thought I'd use a young and moldable new realtor who was fresh and idealistic, can't be ripped off by her, but see was a terrible negotiator and I should have just contacted the listing agent.

Dual agency agreements are a joke, got burned again and lost 25k to a developer, friend of the realtor(who I really liked, dinner with the family type liked) learned the line of business and personal there.

And on it goes.

Now lets say you are the average buyer and you are only going to have 3 or 4 purchases and sales in your life. I had 3 lifetimes worth of bad experiences. I have heard more people complain about a realtor than praise. It is those lazy, greedy, self interested, self important realtors who make it bad and the industry as near as I can tell is not set up to improve. The trend looks down to me. Higher end sales is where I see the real realtor professionals, but are they selling knowledge or experiences?

If I'm a broker collecting 250/mo in desk fees from 10 or 20 loser realtors am I really going to sit down with these people and have a heart to heart and say look your part-time unprofessional attitude is bringing the industry down? Does this sound like a discount brokerage to you? The incentives aren't there as I see it. As for knowledgeable realtors, I've been in the real estate business as an investor for 4 years and I am fully amazed at how little realtors on average know about real estate, home construction, building codes and materials, financing options for seller and buyer alike, legal issues. Then they say "I'm a real estate professional"? So many are salespeople not real estate professionals. A salesperson walks you through a process, a professional offers value of knowledge and leverages that knowledge into you getting the house you want and need. There are just too few awesome realtors out there to compensate for the bad ones and as a result public perception of the industry drops to used car salesmen and people seek alternatives. The rise of discount brokerages and online FSBO sites is the evidence. What is a realtor to do?