Sorry, you had that experience.
There is certainly a wide range in Realtor service levels, and I blame it primarily on the way the business is structured. Licensing only covers the legal requirements and obligations, and the fines and penalties for each.

What isn’t covered is customer service or professionalism, and unfortunately, the vast majority of brokerages don’t require minimum levels of professionalism either.

And by minimum I mean “pick up the phone and respond in a reasonable time frame.” Note that it’s not just you. Most Realtors treat other Realtors terribly as well.

It’s common for many listing agents to just not answer or respond when you submit an offer if they already accepted or close to the asking price because they’re trying to get it under contract asap so they don’t have to answer calls.

That is RARELY in the seller’s best interests but it happens more times than I’m comfortable with for a profession. For buyers agents, they will book a showing for an occupied house and then just no show without notice which needlessly displaces the owner or tenant.

When showing many times they will gloss over obvious defects in the home or try and push you towards something they feel you should buy versus just describing your options and letting you decide. The professionalism could be solved by training, but sadly most of the training out there is for overcoming objections, cold calling, dumping underperforming prospects, and other old-school outlooks and scuzzy feeling sales techniques.

But again most agents don’t even take the initiative to improve themselves with that because there’s no requirement to. Anyways, that’s the WHY. Here’s how I do things differently. Before real estate, I helped build another multimillion-dollar business that was based around serving customers’ needs and going above and beyond. “Does this serve the client best” is the beacon that I guide my ship and my team by? Responses and communications are one of the prime metrics I actually *track* to make sure you are getting the attention they need.

And that varies depending upon what stage of the process you are at. But regardless, if you reach out to me you will get a response or I will answer. And overall, my goal is to do such a great job that you will recommend me to your friends and family. Realtors that try and paper over things to make a few extra bucks of commission on one deal by convincing a buyer to overpay what they’re comfortable with are shooting themselves in the long term.

It’s obvious and leaves a sour taste in people’s mouths. You are correct that for most in-demand properties still, you have about a 2-day window to go look and submit an offer. There are some cases where there’s more time (Zillow homes, long time on markets, condos) but even still best not to dawdle too long. And to that end, I have a team to help facilitate showings. If you’d like to know more, feel free to hit me up in a private message.