Really need advice

[Account Closed]

We are so disappointed with our listing agent. I've rewritten this post several times trying to convey our situation as accurately and honestly as possible.

Before we listed our home we interviewed four realtors and saw their marketing plans (All basically the same). We settled on our current realtor based on a recommendation from our close friends, who have worked with her in the past on real estate deals and also work with her husband.

I knew we were in for a long road right away based on the initial listing price of our house. It seemed too high. There was "some" supporting information for the price but again I was skeptical. Right after listing we started getting a lot of showings. It wasn't everyday but we were getting multiple showing days, double showings and even private showings during open houses (didn't realize that was even possible).

The showing feedback, for the most part, was typical. The negative feedback was about things we cannot change. Also, out of all those showings only three said our house was above market value. We had a few second showings but no offers.

Our realtor was awesome for a while and was everything we could have hoped for. Communication was great, follow up and more importantly follow through was on point, she was proactive, helpful, explained different parts of the process, etc. We definitely trusted her with our real estate needs.

Then it happened. What happened? We are still not sure but things just changed. Responses got shorter, things weren't explained very well (Which left us with more questions than answers), response time got longer and longer.

We did a price reduction at day 57 and had four more showings scheduled in less than 24 hours. Since then we have reduced the price again and only had one showing. (Currently at day 74 with average solds being in the 50’s)

After the first price reduction and showing notifications, I asked our realtor if she could do an open house that weekend hoping to add a little pressure to the new potential buyers to make an offer if they were interested. Then we find out our realtor was about to take her second extended weekend out of town (since listing our home). To be fair it was a surprise trip that she didn’t know about... She assured us that we could still reach her if needed and was checking email/voicemail regularly.

I sent her a message on a Saturday letting her know that we wanted to put in an offer on the house WE found. I’m paraphrasing here but basically, “Great, I'll do it Tuesday when I get back”. Huh?

Then she came clean and told us she was in Vegas and basically too busy to do it. I wasn't happy but there wasn't anything we could do about it.

Unfortunately, the builder incentives were going to expire on that Monday. Her response to that was its just scare tactics and they will honor those incentives on Tuesday. Sorry not taking that chance, the builders realtor made it very clear on that Monday that they would NOT extend. Our agent sent us half a snotty message saying she has a long drive but will do it late Monday evening. All I could think was I told her Saturday so I didn’t feel sorry for her. Don’t tell your CLIENTS that you are available if you have no intention of being available.

That’s when everything went completely south! The offer was submitted late Monday evening, Tuesday we got a counter offer from the builder that was $5,000 MORE than full price!? This started an endless email cycle between our realtor and the builder’s agent. We quickly lost patience with the process and then it happened.. The builder’s agent sent me an email w/ attachment which included a long email string between her and our agent. Turns out our agent was talking VERY poorly about us. I’m still very angry about what I read…

I sent our agent an email along with one that she sent to the builder’s agent and simply asked her if we were really that hard to deal with. She apologized saying “it’s not you, it’s me blah blah blah.” and basically told us she understands if we fire her.

My wife sent her an email and I thought they came to an understanding. I was not a part of that email so I’m not 100% sure what was said, nor do I care .

After that I called the builder’s agent upset with the process and told her the endless email cycle needed to end and we needed to answers to our concerns or we were walking away. What would you know, after a 30 minute conversation we were ready to sign a purchase agreement and both agree on what the breakdown in communication was… I’ll let you guess what that breakdown was.

This is the part where our agent lost me completely, we got the electronic purchase agreement from the builder’s agent and as I started to read the agreement I noticed our agent already signed it which seemed very strange. I actually read it and realized that almost ALL the terms that were agreed too weren’t in there!!! So I sent our agent an email with all the things missing. Which started yet another endless email cycle. Again I talked with the builder’s agent and like magic everything was fixed.

Now ready to sign the new purchase agreement, which our agent already signed again, I asked our agent if she was going to go over the contract with us. Her response was “I am fine with whatever you prefer.”

She had NO intention of going over this purchase agreement with us and had already signed it the day before. This is completely unacceptable to me. What is she here for?

There has been more nonsense since but this post is already too long. I have left a message at our agent’s office for the principle broker to call me but I have no idea what to say to them... Or if they will even call back.

I feel like she has completely abandoned us! If by some miracle we do get an offer I have ZERO faith in her negotiation skills after how she handled our offer on the new home.

Any advice or information on what to say to the principle broker would be awesome. We have about two more weeks left on our contract with her, but will be tied to her with the new home (if we can sell ours before the contingency is up). She also took a break on the commission on our home, so finding a new agent to keep the commission that low would be difficult, I assume. Maybe that's why she's acting this way? She'll be making out on the new home considering she did next to nothing, didn't even send us the MLS listing for it after we told her we were interested. Basically, if we don't ask for it, we don't get it. Information needs to be pulled from her via multiple emails, getting her on the phone is always a project, texts are either replied to immediately, or half a day later. Just don't know what to say, what to ask for, what to do, how to fix this and sell our home already.

[Gilbert Dominguez]

First of all if you felt the listing price was set too high from the start you should have said something right away. Next its not the your realtor's fault that you chose to buy a home where the builder had such a close deadline for the incentives they were offering. To not get a response from a realtor for a day or two is typical. You need to learn but I guess you already have that realtors are very busy people most of the time. You might have thought to get a realtor that would have more time for you. Its next to impossible to get any realtor to respond to you on a week end , take that as a given. 

If this is your first time selling a home you might have thought to try selling your house long before you actually needed too as a trial run to know what to expect and be prepared to deal  with possible outcomes or events . Now you know that when interviewing potential realtors to ask if they have any up coming trips out of town and if they do ask yourself or them what to do as a contingency plan which might include having the broker handle things for you in the event your realtor might not be around. 

We all want realtors to jump when we say jump but sadly this is not ever going to be likely. 

When buyers were asking you or making comments you might have tried being more proactive and asked if you did certain things would they be willing to make an offer on your house giving yourself time to do what was being requested. Remember your goal is to sell your house and if you would be unable to or unwilling to make changes you might have then offered to drop the price in exchange for a commitment to buy your house.

According to what you said there were plenty of buyers coming to view your home but it did not sell simply because it was not what buyers wanted. Even if the realtor gave you all the preferred responses that still would be no guarantee your house would have sold. 

All you can do now is take this as a learning experience and go from there.