If you own property of any sort chances are that at more than one point in time you have had to deal with an estate agent. Now your experience may have been a pleasant one but for most property owners it is usually an absolute nightmare. Real-estate agents seem very eager to gain your business but once they rope you in, it isn’t too long before you realize that they don’t have your best interest at heart.

Attempting to contact them seems virtually impossible and when you do finally manage to reach them they are very quick to brush you off and make you feel like just another number. Unless your property is worth millions or you are looking to rent out thousands of square meters chances are that you are not going to receive the type of attention you were initially promised.

When me and my partner were looking to rent a commercial property for our internet cafe little did we know how frustrating and time consuming the process would actually be. But the searching for the right location would prove to be the least of our problems. There seemed to be no shortage of shops on the market that suited our budget at the time. What made things extremely difficult was constantly trying to get in contact with the agent responsible for that particular property. We would have had a better chance at locating an extinct species than making contact with an estate agent.

We found a property that was in our price range and in exactly the right location. I called the agent listed on the add and not surprisingly I was redirected to her voice mail. I left a brief message and it took about two working days before we got a call back. We made an appointment to view the premises and once there we were made to wait for 15 minutes outside the shop. The worst part about this was the agency was directly across the road from where we were standing so it wasn’t like she had the longest trip to make. She finally arrived and upon inspecting the property we filled out an application form.

Three days went by and we still hadn’t heard back so I gave her a call to see if she had heard anything from the owner. She told me that the application had been forwarded to the owner and she was hoping to hear from him any day now. We waited another two days and still no call from the agent. At about this point we were really starting to become very frustrated and impatient. I called her again only to be redirected to her voicemail, and upon leaving her a message I started to seriously doubt whether she had submitted the application to the owner at all. She finally got back to me that evening and said that she had spoken to the wife of the owner and was told that they were yet to make a decision.

Another couple of days passed and still no response so I decided to venture down to the premises and see if I could somehow get in contact with the owner himself. The gentlemen that owned the cafe next door was very eager to tell me that the owner of the property had an office right above the shop and that I should go and speak to him directly. When I approached the owner and told him the situation he looked at me in total disbelief because no one had given him any application for the shop downstairs. He then proceeded to ask his wife if she had spoken to the real-estate agent and she too stood there with a very confused look on her face.

When the agent was asked why she hadn’t advised the owner about the interest in his property she denied everything and said that no application was filled out for that particular premises. Even though my email correspondence with her proved otherwise, she still stood by her story.

Author Bio: Real-estate agents are a thing of the past and with the technology now available on the internet selling or renting your property on your own has never been easier.