It seems many professions have the stereotypical sets of wheels. If playing to this stereotype, it would seem engineers have boring sedans, accountants seek the cheapest car available, and large property owners all drive pickups.
But what about real estate agents? As one who has worked with an abundance of them in my brief lifespan, let’s determine if this profession succumbs to a stereotype. I’m sticking to first names for the duration.
In 1998, I moved from Jefferson City to Cape Girardeau just prior to getting married.
The first agent was Birdie. Birdie had been in real estate long enough to have listed the property on which Buckingham Palace was later built. However, her chariot was a nearly new Cadillac Deville. With its 4.6 liter Northstar V8, she drove like her butt was on fire. Mrs. Jason and I had a singular interaction with her; Birdie’s ignoring my repeated demands to stop and empty my bladder helped seal her fate.
The agent we would use to purchase our house was Patty. An agent new to the area, she had recently moved to Cape Girardeau from somewhere around Los Angeles. She had brought her Blazer along and it still had California plates upon our initial meeting.
We used Patty’s services again nearly three years later when we sold the house. By then she was driving a Buick Regal.
In 2001, we moved 440 miles northwest from Cape Girardeau to St. Joseph. On our first day there, we met Nan. Her Mercedes was the first one I experienced. A true wheel-dealer, Nan lamented about having purchased the Mercedes.
It seems her previous steed was a Ford Bronco. Nan said it’s ability to go anywhere in any type of weather was something her Mercedes could only dream about doing.
From what she jokingly told us, we wore her out on real estate. Upon purchasing our house (only the 75th she showed us), Nan and her husband moved a half-hour south to Kansas City. When we departed St. Joseph in 2006, she had just re-entered the real estate world.
By then, Nan’s Mercedes was long gone, replaced with a Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Heading 190 miles east to Hannibal, our first excursion was with Beth. For the life of me, I cannot remember what she drove. Upon her making a few snide and sarcastic remarks, we told the broker to find us another agent.
John was quite good. His Ford F-150 also has the highest standard deviation of this group.
Trimmed out with a moonroof, leather seats, and an automatic on the floor, John’s F-150 was equipped unlike any pickup I had ever ridden in. A few years after purchasing our house, we entertained the idea of buying something with acreage. John showed us a few and he still had the F-150.
At some point John started his own realty company and he asked Becky to show us a few parcels. Having driven an early Prius, I was impressed how far Toyota had advanced their hybrid technology in the interim and how well it was applied to the Camry. It was nearly the exact same shade of tan as John’s F-150.
In 2011, my employer was restructuring and I took a job in Jefferson City. This is where the number of agents truly flourishes.
The first agent we had on the selling end in Hannibal was Margaret. She didn’t last real long. After advertising our house in several publications for $30,000 more than our asking price and subsequently taking no ownership of it by blaming the secretary, we unceremoniously fired her. I only saw her white Avalon once.
After Margaret departed, we swapped brokers and were offered Jacki. The embodiment of the ditzy blond stereotype, Jacki drove a dark blue Buick Enclave. Her sloth and unresponsiveness resulted in Mrs. Jason and I introducing her to greener pastures.
Jan is a real estate goddess. When we first starting doing business with Jan, she was driving a Nissan Murano.
Soon thereafter the Nissan disappeared for a Mercedes GL. I first saw the Mercedes when Jan stopped by one day while we were checking on the house. The outside temperature was about zero degrees Fahrenheit and Jan had only a thin jacket. When I inquired, she said from her living in Alaska for over thirty years she generally didn’t even wear a jacket until it was ten degrees Fahrenheit.
Jan was successful in getting our house sold.
When we moved to Jefferson City, our first agent was Marcelle. Marcelle was a decent agent and was worried about how much longer her 2002 Camry would last. At the time it had 120,000 miles and was starting to give her a few intermittent electrical troubles.
On more than one occasion she had to borrow her mother’s Mercedes E55 due to the Camry acting up (Marcelle’s mother had retired from real estate). An illegal shenanigan by the head of Marcelle’s team was what prompted us to take our business elsewhere.
Alan seemed to drive a different vehicle every time we saw him. At first it was a Highlander hybrid.
The Highlander was interspersed with a Suburban that belonged to his son.
After showing me a house best redecorated with five gallons of gasoline and a torch, Alan told me of some “wonderful” property he had listed. For four times the typical price per acre for this area, I could have whatever piece I wanted but it did require a ten acre minimum purchase. Knowing the property was a glorified ravine, I compared the price to bovine fecal matter, adding there was absolutely nothing to warrant that type of entrance fee.
He immediately feigned an illness and we never saw him or his Highlander again.
Moving on from Alan, Susie had recently relocated to Jefferson City. She was a very good agent, having once been one of the top ten producing agents in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Sadly, our relationship was short lived as she was diagnosed with cancer and subsequently refocused her efforts.
Mrs. Jason rode in her Cadillac, but I did not.
Our next agent was Donna. When we first met her, she was driving a blue Ford Fusion.
Other times she was driving a red Ford Fiesta. Donna’s tenure was also short as she didn’t provide comparison prices or copies of signed paperwork despite repeated requests to do so. She must have skipped that part of real estate school.
Shopping around yet again brought us to Julie. With vanity plates advertising her profession, the headlights on Julie’s Lexus were phenomenally cloudy for its age. Julie was another short lived agent as the last house she showed us was one in which she couldn’t be bothered to even get out of her Lexus.
After Mrs. Jason and I critiqued her motivation and integrity, we bid Julie adieu.
This is a repeat; calling Jan the Real Estate Goddess for advice upon divesting ourselves of Julie, we realized Jan’s real estate license was good for the entire state, so we worked with her to purchase the house we wanted. Her husband also owns a Mercedes SUV – whichever one is rated at around 400 horsepower.
Thus my questions: What have your real estate agents driven? Where were you at the time? And, do you think there is an accurate automotive stereotype for different professions?
Thanks to Jim Klein for inspiring this question.
My wife and I were discussing this topic this morning of what vehicles the realators that we dealt with drove and she reminded me of this one guy named Phil that sold us our second home in Amsterdam, NY. He drove a red Lotus and while driving to the first house he wanted to show us, he got stuck on a snow hump when pulling into a driveway and had to be towed out.
When my wife and I moved locally last year, our agent drove a new Buick LaCrosse. She backed it into the fire hydrant at the end of the driveway of the house we bought. She lamented that she had done $1500 of damage to month-old car. After that, she always parked in the center of the cul-de-sac. The listing agent for our new house drove a late model Mitsubishi Galant. Both cars were sort of pearly white.
In the late eighties, my family moved to the Boston area, and my parents took my sister and I with them house hunting. We had to have different agents for different towns, one agent was allowed to show houses in the whole metro. So, I remember three agents’ cars. A Mercury Grand Marquis, a Nissan Maxima, and a Toyota Camry.
I too work in real estate. I work from a suburban office of about 70 agents. Our parking lot is as diverse as just about any suburban office around us comprising banking, telephone, medical, insurance, etc.
Primary trends:
The dominant vehicle style would be a medium to large CUV / SUV. Brands from Kia to Cadillac are represented. This could be as high as 70%
Sedans, to the extent that they exist, tend to be large mid-sizers – Camry, Passat, Fusion, Avalon, Impala, various Hyundai.
Luxury brands of any style are probably under 10%.
The vehicles got smaller fast during the recession – we are in a somewhat gas intensive business! Vehicle size is creeping up again.
Beaters and subcompacts are pretty much non-existent. Compacts are rare – nobody wants their clients resting their chin on their knees!
Several models of Jeep seem to be on the rise – a strong CJD dealer near our office may be the reason, but we picked up a huge new Toyota dealer as a neighbor last fall – that could shift things again.
Outliers: One Prius, there is one empty nester that swears by minivans as a business vehicle, full-size four door pick-ups are under represented compared to the market, but there are at least four. A few agents own CCs that show up (rarely) at the office for meetings and all the paperwork we tend to have to do. I don’t think anybody takes a CC to a client meeting.
Cars tend to reflect the agent’s personal lives and hobbies – people with families and hobbies requiring towing tend to have the bigger people haulers. Empty nesters are more likely to have sedans. Agents that are also into rental property or home building tend to have at least one truck – this may also be the beater exception now that I think about it – older SUVs for job site activity and pulling work trailers.
Jason’s experience is a lot like our parking lot – quite diverse. The old timers tell me things were more uniform – much like office attire used to be suit and tie. Today its more khaki and polo, and people had to move on from upscale full-size domestic sedans mostly because the auto market hasn’t been dominated by full-size domestic sedans since 1979. Agents feel a lot more free to do their own thing.
Last one I dealt with (2006-07) drove a base model Dodge Intrepid. A car as unassuming and no-nonsense as she was.
Things have certainly changed since I was a kid. Some of my earliest and fondest auto-related memories center around my parents’ search for a new home in the summer of 1976. With one exception the agents who brought prospects to our old house and the sales reps at the various new subdivisions we visited drove some sort of Broughamtastic luxury vehicle. It was quite a treat for me at age 7 to ride around in cars with factory 8-track players, power windows and pillow velour seats. The seatback mounted cigarette lighters on one agent’s fully loaded Pontiac Grand Ville particularly intrigued me. It was all a long way from Mom’s base model ’72 LTD or Dad’s Ford Courier.
The one “luxury” exception was driven by a Coldwell Banker agent with whom my parents briefly dealt. IIRC her name was Lila, in her late 50s-early 60s and spoke with some sort of European accent. She drove her clients around in a new Volvo wagon. Lila was used to dealing in much more upscale properties than my parents’ little green house in a “declining” neighborhood and it showed. Mom thought she was a real snob!
Speaking of Mom’s LTD, my other great automotive memory of that summer was when Mom did some house shopping one afternoon while Dad was at work. After walking through the display models and getting some info Mom (with me in tow) headed back to the LTD to go on to the next subdivision. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the thing to start. Fortunately the owners of one of the homes down the street from the models were working outside and noticed my Mom having difficulty with the car. When they came by to ask how they could help, Mom asked if she could use their phone. Instead they offered to take us home…..in their Honda Z600.
The one time I ever dealt with a real estate agent was in 2000, when we sold our first house. I don’t remember what kind of car “SleazeBob” drove, probably some sort of K-car with 200,000 miles based on everything else he did and said. If there is any justice in the world SleazeBob has gone back to working the night shift at the Gas ‘n Go; he for sure didn’t have the skills to succeed in a people oriented environment. We hired him because he was a friend of a friend; huge mistake, to this day the woman who recommended him apologizes every time we see her.
Your really need to get a smartphone app! :). We looked at about 50 houses and looked online and hundreds before we found ours. I only ride with the realtor a couple times. Most of the time I would meet her at the house on my lunch break. This was in 2014 and their was no time to wait for the weekend to look, stuff was getting bought up from under us if we waited that long.
My agent drove a BMW 7 series.
House shopping was different in 2001! The advent of all the online listings has made it easier by far but pictures can still be deceiving. An agent I talked with when agent shopping was embarrassed I knew the available houses better than him.
Online has made it more immediate for buyers, and in some cases, perhaps less work for agents. Being a family member, ours just set us up a login for MLS online and basically said “tell me what you want to see and I’ll set up a showing”. He knew that we knew the area better than he did (he’s out in the ‘burbs south of the city) and that we would in all likelihood find new listings just as fast as he would. We only ended up actually touring twelve properties, and the only time we even rode anywhere with him was to go have a drink at one point between two showings…
I was 6 when we moved in 1980 to Crookston, Minnesota, and we had multiple realtors haul us around, two of whom drove us around in Oldsmobiles…one in a ’76 Ninety Eight (where I played with the power windows much to the realtor’s frustration) and the other in an ’80 Delta 88 (the realtor looked to us in the back seat more than he looked at the road, it seemed). When we moved to Fargo in 1985, the realtors were MLS and we had only one realtor. He drove a ’78 or ’79 Buick LeSabre in a lovely shade of puke green. That LeSabre seemed tired even then, despite being only 6-7 years old. I think my folks thought that, given his success as a realtor, he should’ve been driving a nicer car!
I briefly worked with a female agent in the late ’80’s who drove a manual transmission Toyota Cressida. And our current neighbor is an active agent; she drives a 6-speed 3rd gen Acura TL. Both in fairly heavy metro traffic areas. Our most recent buyer’s agent drives aLexus RX hybrid; our most recent seller’s agent drove an E-Class diesel when they weren’t sold in California; he had it imported from Florida with just over the 7500 mile allowable limit for California “import”.
The last realtor I worked with drove an Acura TLX. Since we are talking stereotypes, I always imagine women real estate agents driving an Acura, Lexus or Mercedes small sedan or small CUV. I imagine men driving the same, but midsize. I think of older time real estate agents in Cadillacs. The thing is, the stereotype often holds up for me because that’s usually what I see. I think what others have said seems to be the case, its one of those professions you kind of need to “look” the part. Not absolutely, but I think when people know agents make most of their money on commissions that if they drive nice cars and wear nice clothes, they must be good at what they do.
Were I a real estate agent, I’d probably get a well taken care of Lincoln Town Car were I going to haul people around in it. I’m a big guy, and just the standard Town Car back seat is comfy. Plus the ride is real nice.
My agent drove a Chevy Malibu four banger, nothing special. Back in the late 80s, my dad sold real estate for awhile, when he was driving a 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass 4-door. My neighbor’s house is currently up for sale, and the agent is driving a Hyundai Sonata.
I know a realtor, and she is pretty succesful in her business. She sells houses in the 400k-500k range in a planned community near Houston. She drives a BMW 3 series and when asked what she loved most about her car she told me: It is paid off.
We have a home staging business and deal with real estate agents all the time. It seems light prestige is the key. Two have not-new but recent BMWs, a 1 series convertible and a last-generation X3. One has a high-end Rogue. One has a 3-generation back Acura TL. One has an A4 and another has an E350. They’re kind of all over the map. In SF, it’s all BMWs or Lexus RX400h.