A Realtor You Can Trust … NOT!

Strangely enough, I’ve been owner of two houses and yet never had to deal with a real estate broker. After my experience selling the rental property I own, I don’t really want to deal with one ever again.

We agreed to use one because a) we thought it easier than driving 1 hour, 15 minutes to show it ourselves, b) to use their experience and c) because the realtor is a friend of the family. It is (c) that particularly irks me because we trusted that any realtor would keep our needs in mind, and more so because of a long-standing family relationship with this realtor. We were wrong.

Our realtor has done little to show the house, has repeatedly done things that they felt should be done even against our wishes, shown little knowledge of the trade, and in the end left us frustrated and angry with them, their company and the process as a whole. It was my understanding that a realtor acting as an agent for you should be fighting for you, not against you. And yet, even when we implicitely stated how we wanted things done, they weren’t – creating more of a hassle for us.

In the end, a series of mistakes and poor judgements have us dropping this friend and the company:

  • We were told that we couldn’t have an Open House 2 weeks ago because the agent had a family committment. I wondered why another agent from the office couldn’t handle it but stayed quiet. We did finally get an open house the following week at our insistence. And the agent didn’t even show up – an alternate was sent instead. Why couldn’t that have been done the week before?
  • We received an offer that was significantly lower than the asking price, despite the fact that no home in that area has sold for less than the asking price, and the last home sold more more than what was being offered. We countered with a number that was less than we really wanted because we wanted to be done with this and we were told that they were a pre-approved buyer. Slam dunk, right? Well, we didn’t get the paperwork and go another offer in the meantime. Suddenly, despite no paperwork or confirmation of their funding, we’re told that we can’t consider this new offer because the other one is a ‘done deal’. I see no paperwork, nor a formal offer, so how is this a done deal? Oh, because the buyer’s agent – who is in the same office as our realtor – promised them it was done, despite us not having seen the contract, the formal offer or the guarantee that they were funded. Now, our agent doesn’t want to go back on them. Who are you really looking out for – them or us?
  • The new offer we received was from a person we met before we even put the house on the market. They came back to us with interest completely outside of the realtor. In fact, although they tried to attend the open house, they state that when they arrived, the open house was already closed before its scheduled end time. Yet, our agent states that they are eligible to get paid regardless of the fact that they had NOTHING to do with this offer.

In the end, I’m furious with our agent and the company, who I won’t name but will say rhymes with Matterson-Quartz. I feel that our agent hasn’t put due diligence into any aspect of our sale, hasn’t been fighting for us at all and in fact has hindered more than helped us. I don’t know if other companies are any better, but we’ll be finding out if this second offer doesn’t come through – we terminated our contract with the old company this morning.

And we still have to collect the $8,500 in damages from the previous tenants, the asshats.

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