Who's your agent and why is no one lighting a fire under the listing agents or his/her brokers b*tt?
Pick up the phone now and call whoever can move the paperwork and has the authority to make a decision!

Call the head office, ask to speak to the manager, not the agent and tell them about why you are thinking of withdrawing. Be calm, be specific and give him a chance to make it right, you might be pleasantly surprised. If that doesn't get you anywhere I'd lodge a complaint with the LT. Governer of the State for poor business prefromance as well as the real estate association.

Call the relo company direct! They are normally highly motivated sellers.

Tricia

gardensgirl,

Go directly to the relocation company. They don't want inventory sitting when there is a qualified buyer.

Tell the person you speak to, case manager, exactly what has happened including all time frames, contract language and violations by the agent. Tell them calmly that you are serious about terminating the contract due to non performance on the part of their agent and hence the relocation company.

Also let it be known that you will contact your state attorney general, or similar person, for lack of perfomance and contract violations.

Be firm, but polite. If you receive no answers within 48 hours, terminate the contract and move on. Tell them that's exactly what you intend to do.

If you have an attorney, I would immediately contact him or her, appraise them of the situation. They may have some sage advice or be able to act on your behalf.

Enjoy the journey.

eal51 in western CT

Thanks to everyone who responded. Unfortunately, I did something I always vowed not to do and used a "friend" as a real estate agent. She is very, very new to the business so was hoping to help her out. In hindsight, I KNOW it was a mistake.

I spoke to her tonight and told her that her broker needs to call this lazy agent's broker and the light the fire!! My agent's broker is a big dog in this state RE market and sits on many boards, but you think she would have done something before this. Not only are we buying THIS house, we are selling 2 homes through this broker as well. So, they are getting 3 commissions from us, totalling about $30K!!

Here is the email I was gonna send that relo company. What do you think?

February 14, 2007

XXXX
XXXGroup, Inc.

My husband and I are the couple that placed the offer to purchase XXXX

I am writing because I am very concerned that we have heard nothing from your agent, XXXXX with XXXXX, since we submitted the home inspection findings to her on February 2, 2007. It has now been 12 days since we submitted to XXXX. She has had a myriad of excusesÂincluding that you are not open on the weekends, which we know is not true per your website. It took my husband less than one (1) day to get estimates on work to be done, not sure why it would take XXXX twelve days?

I am not sure if she submitted the home inspection report to you in a timely fashion. If so, you would have received it no later than February 5th, 2007. However, it is my understanding that you just received it on 02/13/07.

We would like to know what is going on with the property so we can plan or move on.

Please let us know what the intentions of the WHR Group are. I understand from your addendum you have seven (7) days to respond, but we are now going on twelve (12) days.

If you wish to discuss further, you can call me personally at (XXXXXXXXX) Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXXX

Thanks guys!

I won't go into all the gory details but went through the same thing with a "company" owned house but had to deal with the employee living in house.

It finally took our sending them a written notice that we were withdrawing our offer in 24 hours if there was no response from them in that 24 hours. They finally did but the realtors the employee/company was using wound up paying for several things that needed repair just to get the house off their hands.

I'd never go through that again. It was the most frustrating thing I've ever gone through. It wasn't like there were dozens of people wanting to buy this house as it needed a LOT of cosmetic work.

I bought two homes in the past through a relocation company. Both transactions moved very slowly. Any offer or other activity made after 5 pm on a Friday was not even presented until a Monday morning at the earliest because of their hours. The relo companies then had their own procedures for dealing with these offers or other activity like inspection reports. In one case the committee met on Wednesday mornings so making an offer on a Friday, had to wait for a Wednesday for a response. Then reviewing the inspection report had to wait til a Wednesday etc. You get the idea -- very very slow process to work with them. At one time we were so frustrated that we were about to walk, but our realtor bypassed the relo company's realtor and spoke directly to them on our behalf. Things started happening. The realtor for the relo company was used to doing business with the relo company and never pushed for answers that we needed, our realtor wasn't afraid to get answers and he did. Good luck !

I found out something new when working with our agent a couple of years ago. He said that when a relo company is in charge of the sell/purchase process of a home, he doesn't get his full 3% commission. His office is in an agreement with the relo company where they (relo) refers the RE office to any new empolyess moving to the area and in turn the relo gets the bulk of the comission. He said it made the difference of thousand's of dollars in his pocket.
That may explain why no one is in a big hurry to complete the transaction. We've been relo'd 3X in the past 10 yrs and it's nearly always a hassle. We've never been on the buying end, but I can imagine it's just as annoying. I can say as a seller that once a contract was presented the entire process flew by. I can also see that maybe the relo company already has bought the house from the sellers based on the first offer(in our situation, once a valid offer was presented, the relo compnay bought the house for the amount of that offer and then legally became the seller). At that point, no one has a personally vested interest in speeding things up. The only "person" losing anything is the relo company.

I wouldn't send the long letter. Send them a notice that you presented the inspection findings on 2/2, that they have 7 days to respond and it has now been 12 days, and that you are rescinding your offer as of 5:00 pm on 2/15 if you do not hear from them. Send it to the relo company and cc: the agent and broker.

I think you need to follow up that Email with a much sterner letter. You need to send something that will really get their attention. First of all, you should overnight the letter with the provision that the receiver must sign it. You should demand, not politely request, a response and set a deadline for it. Make it clear that you're going to cancel the contract if you don't hear back.

This is a business deal, after all, and you have the right to expect that they conduct themselves in a businesslike manner, so be firm, but not nasty.

Finally, you should overnight a copy of the letter to the head of the broker's agency. That should get you some action!

My husband and I are the couple that placed the offer to purchase XXXX

This line should be changed to read My husband and I are the couple that have a contract to purchase XXXX, because you are beyond the offer stage. You have a legally binding contract to purchase and they are not performing on their part of the contract.

Good point.

Thanks to everyone for responding. I have been up since 3:30am EST worrying about all this.

Instead of the letter, I actually did call the relo company today and spoke to the case manager. She seemed surprised to hear we had completed the home inspection, saying she never received anything from their own agent. Talk about furious! I told her we submitted the inspection report to her agent on 02/02 and it was now 2/14, past the 7 day deadline and we wanted to know what was going on. She said she would call the agent and find out because she didn't know anything about any of this and had never seen the inspection report or been notified it had been completed.

When confronted, the relo company's local agent said she had turned in our inspection report, but it goes to her home office for coordination and then is sent to the relo company and case manager. She couldn't find out about it today because their home office and her contact there is not in due to the weather. She doesn't know why he hadn't sent it to the relo company.

I made my agent come pick up our release from contract forms. I told her I was willing to sign an addendum stating that this company had until 5pm EST on 02/16 to give us an answer or the contract was null and void. I do understand they are slower than an individual seller, but they should have been upfront about all of this. We are in a time crunch and need to know what is going with the house we have contract on. Do we need to look elsewhere, do we need to take our remaining home off the market? Should I cancel my request to relocate my office (I work from home so it's a logistical set up from MY corporate office) and all of that stuff.

Again thanks to everyone for their advice and sharing their experiences! I will steer clear from relos in the future, that's for sure!

gardensgirl -- if you can get past how slow the relo companies are, they still offer a lot of bargains without emotional attachments and negotiations. Other than time problems, we thought relos were much easier to deal with. It was all bottom line to them, if it meant good business sense to give in on replacing things in the home, they'd do it flat out. You should find that they are much easier to deal with regarding the inspection report, once they actually see it, then a traditional home owner. I wouldn't give up on them, just know what their limitations are

Well good heavens! Why doesn't someone just fax the inspection report directly to the case manager?

Sending them letters may or may not help you. It sounds like your agent doesn't have a lot of experience with reloc companies. According to my agent (we made an offer to a house listed by a reloc company before), typically it takes 2x the effort to deal with reloc companies. The agents from reloc companies work for reloc company, not for the seller. There is no direct relationship between the agent and the seller. Seller works for some company, who hired the reloc company, whom the agent works for. They have no incentive to be attentive to the seller's or buyer's needs, as they don't expect any repeat business from the sellers and buyers. They have a pile of cases to go through, and they go through them at their leisury pace. Just try to visualize DMV, and your case is at hand on DMV agents. It's kinda like that. Sorry to hear your frustruation. Just try to be relax and wait. It may be a long wait, but it's worthwhile waiting.

My house was a relo 14 years ago, it was a great experience. Anything we commented on in the inspection they fixed (in retrospect we should have asked for more). They were great about letting us do the termite treatment on our schedule and even let us pick the organic guy.

Plus the price ended up being over 18k less than the bid we walked away from when it was still owned by the homeowner. We did bid in September and closed the last week in December but I do not think we were in a rush. 90 days is about average in my area from offer to close with a mortgage