DH and I have recently relocated to a new area and we were assigned an agent to help us find a home to lease. Unfortunately things go lightning fast around here so, while she's shown us about 6 properties over two different days (about an hour total each day), we haven't been able to obtain a lease. We've applied for two only to find out that they were leased to someone else that morning.
We spoke to her this past Thursday and she let us know she'd be out of town for a 3-day weekend and back Monday. Last night (Sunday evening) DH sent her an email and asked about setting up showings for 2-3 places he found online over the weekend. This morning she wrote back and said one was leased on Saturday, she can't find the listing for another (must be pulled already) and she's waiting to hear back on the third home. She also mentioned that she has a brief window of time tomorrow (Tuesday) to show us one or two homes but she's booked pretty solid the rest of the week.
Here's the thing, we can't wait for her. We realize that she needs to prioritize selling a home over leasing a rental, we completely respect that. At the same time, as quickly as things go, seeing 2-3 homes once a week isn't going to cut it. Last Friday DH found a home online and we've already seen it and met with the owner, and he'd like us to come back on Tuesday after he's had a chance to clean it up. This looks very promising but since we found it on our own she won't get a commission from the owner.
We feel bad that we basically went around her and found something ourselves but we really had no choice. We literally couldn't wait 3-4 days while she was unavailable. That said, she did give us a few hours of her time to show us some homes, and she's been in pretty regular email contact with whatever listings she could find, so we feel like we owe her something. We'd like to send her a gift and sincere thank-you for her time. We were thinking a $100 gift card to a nice steak house, something like that? Is that appropriate?