Why is it that when it comes to
paying Professional fees, whether Agency, Legal or for any service, people seem
to develop a deceptive personality? I
cannot count the number of times a client has asked us to find, sell or lease a
property for them and after the job is done, has developed all manner of
avoidance tactics not to pay the agreed fees. It does not matter how
respectable or rich the client is, you still come across these clients
performing disappearing acts after the job has been completed. I had a client
who wanted to dispose of some family land and approached my company to do this.
We shortly after found a buyer, that same evening my client rang to say that he
wanted half of our fees, for introducing us to “his family land” but we should
not mention this to his wife! I had a meeting in the office the next morning to
discuss this development and we agreed that as the fees were quite healthy we
would negotiate and give him a percentage. He agreed to this and we proceeded
very uneasily. As the buyer was about to close on the transaction in the seller’s
offices, the wife of my client summoned me to her office, to tell me that she
would only be paying 1% of our fees regardless of what had been agreed in writing
at the beginning of the transaction. She said she was just notifying me out of
“politeness” To cut a long story short, the buyer overheard all this and
decided that they were going to pull out of the purchase as the sellers had
shown themselves to be untrustworthy. That was the end of that brief.
On another occasion a Judge
called us to view one of our advertised properties, upon getting there, she met
the developer who I had worked on many projects with and was a trusted
colleague. Whist he was taking us around, she started asking him questions and
found out that he knew her family. To my shock, the developer called me a few days
later to say that the lady had called him and gone back to the property on her
own to persuade him to cut my company out of the picture and deal directly with
her! A judge? So who do you trust, when even the legal system is crooked?
Fee paying also seems to turn
some other people into greedy opportunists, who expect a huge portion of the
fees just because they introduced the brother of the cousin of the person who
wants buy the property, to you. Some staff in offices, who have engaged your
services to find accommodation for senior staff members, calls you day and
night for a cut of your fees even though they are getting paid a salary. An
example is a brief we got to find accommodation for some expatriate staff for a
multinational company. I started getting calls at 10pm and 11pm from a certain
member of staff in their finance department, urging us not to forget him and to
remember that “this life is unpredictable and we shall all meet somewhere else
so we should always do good”? This
member of staff had nothing to do with the lease transactions other than being
aware of it. These calls kept coming in steadily every night for about a week,
until I told him that I would sort him out. If you ask the gateman for access
to a property, he expects to get a cut in your fees. Even your driver wants a
cut, so at the end of day you may end up with hardly anything worthwhile in
your pocket. People imagine that realtors, must be raking in tons of money
daily and therefore need a share of the fees for doing nothing other than
greeting you.
Some Agents also feel that they
should collect fees from everyone involved in a transaction, the buyer, the seller,
the tenant, the agent and whoever else they can get from without the other
party being aware. These types of quack Agents give professional Agents a bad
reputation and do not seem to care about the distress they cause to the people
they are collecting monies from. It has become a way of life and a culture in
Nigeria that everyone wants a cut of your cut, just because they can. If God
forbid they are in a position to jeopardise your payments if you don’t give
them a cut, then you are in trouble. A messenger in a company demanded a cut
from the realtors and ensured that he did not get their cheques delivered to
them on the Friday before the banks closed, until he was “sorted out”
As most will testify in this
profession, the ears have heard, and the eyes have seen more than the mouth can
say
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