CHEEKY BASTARDS

I've made a career out of selling and marketing. This is strange though because I think that most marketing and advertising is dishonest and misleading when it is not actually stupid, puerile and not very cleverly thought out.
As regards selling I dislike directly dealing with people, don't like salespeople and prefer to get on with my job away from everyone else.

Marketing and selling may be necessary evils but if it wasn't for having to make a living I could do without them.

I've always hated being driven by sales targets and forecasts. I'd rather create something that's worthwhile regardless of value.

This leads me to wondering why on earth I thought I could be a real estate agent.
Last year, when I was bored and without employment I did an Open Polytech course in real estate. I enjoyed the study and actually did quite well at it. The legal case studies were easy for me as I drew on my university studies in law. Its amazing what we can dredge up from our memory.
After I passed the course and was certificated I was guaranteed a position with a leading real estate company. They are nice people and very professional but wanted me to do cold calling (telephoning potential sellers) each week. This I didn't want to do and so ended up taking a sales and marketing job in Auckland totally unrelated to real estate.
I know that I would be good at selling real estate and matching up the right buyers and sellers but I'd prefer to do this on my own terms, ideally by e-mail and Internet, not as a face to face salesperson.
Unfortunately real estate is still in the days of white shoes, handshakes and big insincere smiles.

So, what has triggered this you may ask (or maybe not if you don't give a toss)?

Currently we have a fixed term lease on a town-house in Auckland. This runs for another 12 months.
As I've decided to cut my working week down to 3 days and only need to spend 2 nights in the city we have decided to go back to our city apartment which can easily accommodate the two of us if I'm only cluttering up the place for a couple of days. We have listed the town-house on Trade Me as it is our responsibility to sub-lease it for the duration of the tenancy agreement.

We are getting a lot of interest and are carefully looking for the right tenant.
Well bugger me if I didn't see a duplication of our advertisement when I checked Trade Me. At first I thought that I must have mistakenly doubled up somehow but on looking closely I saw that the clone ad had contact details of a real estate leasing agency. Fuck! These unscrupulous bastards copied our ad and put their contact details in order to get interested tenants to contact them. What's in it for them? I guess firstly a letting fee payable by the tenant and secondly a data base of people looking for accommodation. Ethical? No. Unscrupulous? Yes. Illegal? I'm not sure. I have contated them and demanded to know on whose authority they have done this and for an explanation of why. If I don't get a satisfactory answer I'm going to report then to Trade Me and check out what other legal recourse there is.

This makes me glad that I shelved the real estate career.