THE WAYS OF THE REAL ESTATE AGENT

There's the dream world and there's the world of documentation. I am a lawyer, therefore for me the world of the documents is the only world there is. Words, computer graphics, animations, moods, impressions, trust, presumptions or friendship do not exist. The agent however is like an artist. For him how his website looks like is more important than what is signed. Documentation for an estate agent is boredom because it is the good-looks of his website that makes the money.

For the agent a lawyer is superfluous, but part of the stage-setting. With a lawyer to the clients things look more solid, more trustworthy. The agent knows that he has concluded a lot of deals without a lawyer and nothing bad has happened, therefore he presumes that a lawyer is not really necessary. The agent also knows that even if something bad happens, he has signed nothing except the contract between him and the buyer about his commission.

A lawyer to the agent is also a kind of parasite because he is paid by the resources that were worked out by the agent. It is the agent who has found the buyer and now the lawyer takes away some of the price without any effort.

Worse still, the agent has no idea what a lawyer actually works so he assumes that he's idle when the latter considers a number of things the agent has never heard of. For an agent the job is nothing more than to get the preliminary contract signed. What this contract says for him is relevant only as long as it specifies the color of the faience in the bathroom. Thus he does not see a big portion of the lawyer's work. Therefore for him the lawyer is paid undeservingly as the only benefit from a lawyer seems to be the public relations image his presence brings.

That's why even when the lawyer is obedient to the agent and not to the purchaser he is a burden to the agent at best. If at that the lawyer is not obedient to the agent he is unbearable. In short, the agent expects the lawyer to be his puppet as, like I said, the lawyer is deemed not really necessary.

I've seen how irritated agents become when a client chooses to choose his own lawyer. They would write e-mails explaining how unnecessary it all is, how they could do this service for no extra cost and how this lawyer does not know his business, how he slows the procedure down and risks the contract to remain unconcluded. These intrigues are to be expected. For the agents an independent lawyer is an intruder. All of a sudden there's control. All of a sudden what they do becomes transparent because there's somebody who not only knows how the system works and who is not answerable to them, but who also communicates with the buyer directly. All of a sudden, the dreamy reality they have been building so assiduously paying for lustrous offices, glazed brochures, computer animations and even TV broadcasts, doesn't look very well.

Yes, there's even a TV program dedicated to selling BG estates to English speaking buyers. There you'll find Bulgaria presented like a tourist destination. Nice girls in national dress dance to carefree buyers who are served beverages. As if on the streets of this country one will meet nobody, but servile girls in exotic dresses. While this idyllic clip goes on screen a voice announces that they will take care of everything so that the buyer could enjoy his beverages. And – by the way – they could provide him with a lawyer so that he does not have to waste any time searching for one.

Accidentally the TV broadcasting estate agency I mention is not a Bulgarian one. But this is just because an Irish or a United Kingdom agency has bigger financial resources. It is worth noting that the attitudes of both the local and the outside agencies operating in Bulgaria are strikingly identical. Besides some of the agencies are mixed. The person who first comes in contact with the client is a compatriot of the client and this reassures the latter. The person on the ground that makes the day to day decisions is a Bulgarian. This is advertised like British run, Bulgarian registered company. It's more like a Bulgarian run, Bulgarian registered, British owned. This way of doing business is inexpensive of the agency as Bulgarians not only know the language, but work for less. The Irish or English compatriot gives you the fiction you like to hear, the Bulgarian takes the decisions the agency likes to be taken. What is said in Bulgarian is not repeated in English and vice versa.

Several years ago I was enthusiastic about the coming of the Irish agents. I thought that they will teach Bulgarians to be diligent, honest and efficient. Instead they turned out to be as unscrupulous as the Bulgarians and the only thing they taught their local colleagues was politeness, mendacity and fancy phraseology. One would expect that western mentality would count for something, but alas, the interest proves to be stronger. And for the insiders it is to be expected. After all the situation in which both the Bulgarian and the Irish estate agencies operate is the same: a brisk market with no established traditions in an post-communist country and hasty buyers that trust the agencies to act like the agencies do on the west. I guess that in Western Europe to be an agent means something. Here both the western and the local agents provide nothing, but politeness. At that they push the prices up and they push the standards down.

The Certificate about the actual state incident I describe in STANDARD CONTRACTS might give someone the false impression that an agent pushes the acquiring of estates to go faster. This might be so if we talk of days, but the same agent slows the process with weeks or even months. The agent likes to organize things. However he does not know what exactly has to be done. Thus he is dormant for months at a time. Then, all of a sudden, he learns that something should have been done months ago and that's why he hurries things in hope that the delay would not be very apparent.

How this hurrying looks like? The parties could exchange e-mails in matter of hours. However this would make the agent redundant so an e-mail from the buyer is send to the agency's office in Dublin. Then the Dublin office re-sends it to the Sofia office of the same agency. The Sofia office sends it to the lawyer who is in Sofia as well. All this is done in English so this e-mail might have been send to the lawyer directly. Now a week has passed and the short original e-mail has swollen to be 6 pages long as each section of this bureaucracy has added a covering letter explaining that it has received this and who this letter should reach. Ah, by the way, how's your new computer performing in your office? Our secretary is going on holiday… Reading 6 pages that have nothing to do with his job irritates the lawyer and he dislikes the client for imposing on him these complications he is not paid for. By now even the lawyer is inclined to cut corners as the time he was paid for is squandered on this aimless correspondence and this means that from now on he works for free.

Anyway, the lawyer answers in a day and then there's another week for the answer on the way back. But after this week the answer's still not received. The client asks for the answer the Dublin office. There's investigation. Where have you sent the answers? To this e-mail address or to the other? Have you written about what it is? The Dublin office asks the Sofia one, the latter asks the lawyer. Could you send it again? Ah, here it is, we have found it!

Then the lawyer needs some information from the buyer and everything starts all over again. Whenever I worked for clients who used no property agents, 5 to 8 e-mails was all it took to complete the process. With agents there are 20 to 50 e-mails and numerous phone calls. However there's no other way: the agent has to be useful!

But it gets worse. A typical agent in Bulgaria neither knows his business, nor the lawyer's business. So he constantly tries to transfer part of his work on the lawyer using the dependence of the latter. However the one thing a lawyer hates is to work for free. If his time has to be spent doing the agent's work, he would neglect as far as possible his inherent obligations. On the other hand, a good lawyer bears in mind that, unlike the agent, he is liable. Thus he's afraid to go too far neglecting his intrinsic obligations. So he becomes irritated and therefore in conflict with the agent. That's how the better lawyer he is, the more conflicts he'll have with the agent about what his job is. This is just another reason why the agents end up recommending the worst possible lawyers to their clients. The way out of this conflict is the lawyer to underestimate the dangers. He can't get paid for the time spent, but he can spend less time.