I'm a for-sale-by-owner and I'm on Realtor.com because I paid for a flat fee listing. I've sold a few houses myself before and this is a new thing, that we FSBO's could get it on there. I have a great ad on there--25 pictures, lots of information, good header, price range is in a common search criteria. So I thought things were going to bust loose! I have not gotten any more interest since I put it on there. We have a website and we can tell where our hits come from and all the inquiries from Realtor.com get forwarded to me directly but I haven't gotten one bite from them. I've gotten dozens of inquiries--e-mails and phonecalls and thirty-one thousand page turns on our website but none from Realtor.com. I was surprised. Then the other night I was talking to someone who is getting ready to buy a house and she had never even HEARD of Realtor.com. I couldn't believe it because that's my go-to place first when I'm house hunting. I'm stumped. I thought your house looked gorgeous and couldn't believe the great price. Texas is cheap! But I didn't watch the whole tour because it was too slow. I wanted to. I was curious what the whole thing looked like. But it was taking too long. If I was house hunting though, I would have stuck with it. In general, I also hate the virtual tours because like the other poster said, if they're just pictures zooming in and out, I'd rather go at my own pace. Why aren't there any REAL tours?

If there are no showings, it's not the school. It's not the carpet. It's not the house pics. It's not the landscaping. It's not some nebulous fixable "thing" that you can do anything about. It's the price. Period. Drop it to a realistic market price and you will get showings. Drop it to slightly below realistic market price and you will get offers. Drop it to well below market price and you will get a bidding war. People haven't stopped buying houses. People have just stopped buying over priced houses. Yours is an over priced house. 5K won't do it, or you'd have had offers. 25K might be closer to the mark. If you need to sell, then drop your price and sell your house. Or keep chasing the market down and carrying the monthly cost of it all. If you don't need to sell, then pull it off the market and wait the 3-7 years that it will take for it to reach your target price.

So she spent an hour getting her job done - so what? It is what it is Wrong, She spent an hour of her time, maybe more getting YOUR AGENTS JOB DONE. You make it sound as if its no big deal. This is a business, I dont expect people to waste my time. If you don't buy the house, you also dont turn into a client, so yes, you are wasting her time. I show MY CLIENTS homes (my listings) for two reasons, one because there is a slim chance the caller will actually buy it,(check statistics on how many times a caller actually buys the house they call on, its very low) but more importantly, that person usually becomes a client. In my area, I can show homes that are an hour away from me, I dont want to waste one of my saturdays showing someone a home whose agent is sitting on their a$$ waiting for someone else to do his job while he collects his 1%. Also, since the listing agent shows you the home and you're getting all your information from her, who is liable should something not be what you expected? The agent who showed and gave you the info is not the one that wrote the offer and represented you. I am assuming you are an agent, since you see the rebate deal as a bad thing. Of course, you don't have to pay the outrageous listing fees when you sell, I am an agent and I also do pay commissions. I believe in the system and when I sell one of my homes, I list them the same way I list a clients home. In one particular case, where I was selling a home outside my service area, I offered a 2% higher commission than the customary rate to get the job done. (customary at the time was 5, i listed for 7) Check previous posts before you "ASSume" anything. I wonder, do you do tell your clients upfront you will not show their house to a possible buyer unless you get a kickback? I suspect not Well two things are wrong here, 1. KICKBACKS ARE ILLEGAL in my state, so I wouldnt do it for fear of loosing my license. 2. I will show any of my clients homes to MY Customers, not someone elses. I have the feeling most sellers would think your agent was lazy for doing what he's doing. THis is the type of agent that gives real estate agents a bad name. Its sleezy! One more thing, you said you simply call and ask to be shown the house. In my area, one of the first questions agents ask is "are you working with an agent"? If you lie and say no, then you obviously realize how unethical this is. If you say 'yes', few agents out there will show you the home, because it is also unethical to meet with a buyer after they have told you they are working with someone else. Your post definitely makes me change the way I do business. Agents in my area area starting to collect fees upfront which are returned when they close on a home. Why? Because there are too many people out there wasting our time and gas doing stuff like this.

This might explain it. Q: My husband and I have been looking to buy a home and, as we've toured neighborhoods, we see houses with real estate signs, but we can't find the homes on the multiple listing service for several days. How long does it take for agents to post information? A: It takes only a few minutes, but the agents aren't putting the information in right away. By their guidelines, real estate agents are supposed to post a listing on the multiple listing service within 48 hours after the home is for saleâmeaning a sign in the yard. I'll bet, though, you're seeing this on Thursdays or Fridays. Agents have told me they like to start advertising homes on a Thursday because that 48-hour window doesn't include non-business days. So if a sign goes in a yard on a Thursday, the agent would not have to put the home on the MLS until Monday. That would give him Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday to possibly sell that home with no other agent involvedâmeaning he would get the whole commission.