I sold two houses in the past year, very happy with both agents. I bought one house, also happy with that agent.
The "I've got a buyer so list with me" is one of the oldest tricks that bad agents use to get you to list. You can tell that agent you will sign a one time agreement for that "special" buyer. We did that a couple of years ago, he did have a buyer, they viewed and bought, so it can work out.
Do some homework, ask questions here, there are good agents out there you just need to find one.

Since you've pulled off the market do some research on future realtors. Take a look around your zip code and see who has the most listings. Track if they've sold. If the person with the most listings also has the most sales, that is a great future candidate.

Sometimes a realtor will tell you anything and everything you want to hear to get the listing. In a hot market it probably doesn't matter because your house will probably sell. In a neutral or buyer's market, that is where the right realtor matters.

See that list you made that you hated about your current realtor? Use it to ask questions when interviewing the next realtor. Be up front that you may be high-maintenance and you expect excellent communication. But be reasonable too - you're not the realtor's only client. Any deviations from the standard contract - add it to that contract. Do not expect the realtor to recall the conversation verbatum and act accordingly. An addition to a contract (right of picture refusal, pictures professionally taken, final proof-reading of flyers, etc.) will be much more memorable to all parties.

I mentioned to you in your other thread that you are defensive. If you want honestly from a realtor, knock the chip off your shoulder, ask for help & advice and be willing to implement the responses. A good realtor will tell you what to do to sell and when to stop if you are over improving.

I'd venture to say that most realtors who list houses do not bring a buyer. We sold with a top guy last year and he was very up front with us - he likes Open Houses as they sell houses in my old area, and he does not ever attend the OH. He made it perfectly clear his staff runs them. He also refuses to do dual agency, and will not bring a buyer in. If someone calls his sign, he directs that person to someone else in his office. This guy knows the area, he seldom ventures from it, and he sells houses.

Now, before you list again next year take some time to go through Open Houses in your immediate area. See what is available and what is selling. If you are really serious about selling next year, chart the houses available. Make a few notes about listing price, house condition, selling price and then compare it to your house. Notice I said your house, not your home. To sell in a slow market you must put aside your feelings for your home. Mentally move out. Look at the house with a buyer's eyes. Your research will allow you to be much more realistic about DOM, comps and salability of your house. Your selling price will be in line with what you are offering and your incurable defect.

One other thing - are you planning on purchasing or moving before you sell? Many people cannot afford to sell an empty house or buy before the current house is sold. However, if you can afford to upkeep two houses it cuts down on the stress of selling if you are not being inconvenienced because you are not living there and trying to keep things in pristine order.

The best thing you could do is start going to realtor web sites, sign up at the major sites, check out the local office sites too.

When you start going to these sites, sign up to get emails about houses in your area for what you think your house will sell for. For us, I went down as low as $175,000 IIRC - up to $250,000 or $300,000 - so I can see the various competition. Go to Realtor.com, sign up there as well. Make notice of the "hot" realtors there and what their pages offer.

Do a google search for your state MLS, see who's site comes up. Go to zillow.com, find your house, claim it, then edit the facts that they have. You can also see "comps" - some aren't current, so it's used as a tool..

I'm very happy with my realtor. She's not pushy but she doesn't ignore me either. I found her when looking to buy a house and liked how she emailed me right back when I emailed her, some agents don't like email. She also let me take my own pics, plus she has no problem being honest with me.

In the past six months, my husband and I have sold two houses and a bought a third. House #1: I hired the realtor who had sold me the house. When she didn't sell it after three months (the length of the listing contract), I "fired" her and hired a new realtor, who sold the house in three weeks after getting the listing. I interviewed five agents before hiring realtor 2. In all fairness to realtor 1, I dropped the price with realtor 2, so that probably made the difference.

House #2: We hired the same realtor who sold us house #3. She brought us a buyer for house #2 after only three weeks but the deal fell through. We are finally closing tomorrow with another buyer on house #2 after about 115 DOM. Oddly enough, the buyers are relatives of a friend of my husband's, and that's how they found out about the house. So the realtor didn't "bring" us this buyer...we "found" them on our own. But she has been great to work with...responding to questions right away via e-mail and phone, keeping house supplied with fliers, advertising our house, etc.

In this current market, you didn't give your last realtor near enough time, and had completely unrealistic expectations about their performance as realtor and yourself as seller. You're going to have to do an attitude adjustment on your part before getting back into the game, or you'll still end up with the same results and complaints. The first "firing" that needs to occur in a property transaction is to fire yourself as "homeowner". Get rid of the emotional baggage you're bringing to the table and look at it as a purely business transaction. From that perspective, then interview realtors who seem the most business savvy and have the best track record of getting homes sold. Hiring the one who tells you exactly what you want to hear and doesn't offer any criticism of the property is an exercise in frustration. And, you must be willing to actually listen to suggestions, or you're again wasting time.

Ditto Hollysprings.

Yep - what hollysprings said!

Especially... "And, you must be willing to actually listen to suggestions, or you're again wasting time."

hollysprings, so what you are saying is that it was perfectly alright for our realtor to lie to us? And we should have been forgiving and stuck by the him?

So are you one on those type of realtors yourself?

The realtor works for us, not the other way around.

My regret is not firing him sooner.

I wish you were my realtor since I would love to fire you. LOL

Maybe the only feedback the agents gave was "that fence is horrible" and since your realtor knew you wouldn't take it down, he didn't bother sharing that feedback with you.

Just a thought...

catfishsam- i read the other thread you posted and didn't respond almost everyone else said what I had to say. I think hollysprings hit the nail on the head and you still remain completely defensive and critical of any advice you ask for. I think your comment was very rude to her, she was very direct and polite in her comment.

No I am not a realtor, but we are selling our home and the people that use this forum have been a great help to us. We average at least one showing a day if not 3 showings due mainly to the advice we have gotten on here.

I don't think the problem is your realtor (our realtor is the same way- he doesn't bring the buyers in) but maybe the complications you have in communication. YOU should have let the realtor know that you didn't like the way the home was listed or the pics, so they can be changed. We had to do the same thing. It is very easy to see from your posts that everything must be your way or no way- that's fine if you don't want to sell your house quickly and without complications.

People on this forum aren't here to attack you, none of us would want to be attacked either. Put your blinders on and view the house as just that "a house" not your home. You won't be happy with the whole process until you can detach yourself- it's a hard process but try it, things will go much smoother.

catfishsam,

With your attitude, I'm surprised the realtor didn't fire you as a client. I'm not a RE agent, but you sound like a textbook nightmare client. I am going to go out on a limb here, but I suspect you will find heartache again if you try and list your house with such a poor attitude. You need help selling your house, obviously it doesn't sell itself as it is otherwise you would have had buyers beating down your door. Best of luck to you when you finally decide to get serious about selling. :)

Well, it is amazing how many of you believe that lying is okay for realtors to do.

I guess none of you went to Sunday School when you were kids?

wow if they teach you manners and communication skills in sunday school i'm glad I didn't go. Since i've never been to sunday school- do they teach you it's ok to be rude as long as you dont lie?

I think deeje was right too-

I don't see how your realtor lied to you- he cannot predict the market, maybe there are many people that want a home such as your but not a fence like yours, maybe he felt that you were a pita or high maintenance and instead of being rude and firing you, he would just let the home go with the flow (obviously fences and chips block the flow)

I don't see how your realtor lied to you- he cannot predict the market, maybe there are many people that want a home such as your but not a fence like yours

It's possible that he sent the MLS listing to some of his buyers, and they vetoed it just based on the photos. That happens all the time.

I had a listing with a pool, amd since I also had a buyer interested in a property like that, I sent her the listing. She didn't like the photos at all, but decided to drive by the property to glance at it. There were several things about it that she didn't like, and she told me to scratch it from the list of those properties she wanted to see.

It may have looked like I was "lying" to my sellers, telling them that I had an interested buyer, but the truth is that the house just didn't suit them. Once they delved into more detail about what they wanted, I had to agree. My listing just wouldn't have worked for them.

I'm not sure, but I don't think hollysprings is a Realtor so you're barking up the wrong tree there.

I would personally like to thank her though for her comments and those that followed her. I did not initially respond to this post or the previous catfish post because it was pretty obvious to me that catfish was unable or unwilling to take any responsibility for the lack of showings or a sale. Instead it's easier to play the realtor blame game and continue to spew the negativity on several posts as the op and in response.

There are two sides to every story catfishsam. We have yours. I would love to know your former agent's side concerning this lie. I wonder how many times you told him you would take care of condition issues with the house and never did?

At the end of the day, selling a house boils down to three things: price, condition, and exposure. The agent is only fully responsible for one of those things. You received excellent advice on your initial post and blasted it. That tells me immediately that you are unable to be responsible for your part of the deal. It also tells me that your stubbornness will result in a very long selling period next time.

I think catfish's realtor had what many realtor's have the lazy syndrome. Because homes sold on their own for years, they got used to being lazy, to shoving the house up on MLS and then doing nothing.

I tried to sell my house a few years ago. and I ended up pulling it off the market, largely because I felt my realtor was unmotivated and dishonest about her ability to sell my house. She knew before I put the house on the market that I had to be able to list it at a certain price to be able to pay her, pay off my mortgage and have enough money for a down payment on another house. I told her upfront that if the price was unrealistic that she should let me know because I wouldn't put it on the market (and thus save us both a lot of work). She told me to do certain things, and I did every single one of them. I spent about 3K getting the house ready for sale. So my house goes on the market, she takes lousy photos and puts them online. It took me a full week to get a showing (keeping in mind this was 2005 and the housing market was far stronger). In the six weeks I had my house on the market, I had a total of 5 showings and one open house. I was basically getting no traffic (probably because my home was overpriced from the get go).

During that six weeks, she didn't answer one email. She called me one (before the open house). I asked her to get feedback (because I wanted to know if prospective buyer had concerns about anything) and she never bothered to follow-up with the other agent. At the end of the six weeks, she told me that she didn't believe in the use of the internet (I wish I had asked that in the beginning), which explained the lack of responses about my email. And when I asked what I could do to generate more traffic, reduce the price slightly, etc., she told me to that I needed about 20K worth of stuff done to my house (none of which she mentioned when I put the house on the market). New windows, adding siding, replacing the kitchen, all of which would have made my house the most expensive in the neighborhood, rather than one that sat in the middle of the market (and the "improvements" she was suggesting were not improvements that are common in my neighborhood).

Basically, I learned a lot (and I was blessed that I didn't have to sell). I learned that for every one great realtor who works their butt off to sell your house, there is one out there who is useless. That many realtors will refuse to be honest with you, and so you have to do your own homework about the housing prices in your neighborhood. And finally, that many realtors will "recommend" unnecessary improvements to your home, so it will sell with minimal work for them.

I believe that you should price your house appropriately, should clean, declutter, make all repairs, and necessary replacements. I do not believe that any seller should have to redo entire rooms and or over improve for the neighborhood.

Sorry to say we are in the same situation as you. We interviewed the top agents in our area and selected the two (they are a team). Needless to say our home has been listed since the end of March and we had to call them this week to suggest lowering our price and we were out of flyers. They came, they signed, now where are they??

rita_2007 your solution to the flyers is to print them yourself. While the realtor may be responsible for printing flyers and dropping them off, no one wants your home sold as much as you do. I'd do them myself if my realtor was unresponsive. But first I'd probably be inclined to drop an email to the realtor before I printed them letting the realtor know that since advertising materials were his/her responsibility, I'd be deducting the amount from his/her commission check when the house was sold. I recall someone posted doing exactly this not to long ago - the realtor immediately printed what he wanted, how he wanted and all was fine.

Also, you've been listed since the end of March? Never sign for more than 90 days. You can always re-up if you feel the realtor is doing a good job (and it just your market is bad).

Catfish- you fell for one of the oldest RE tricks-"I have buyers for your house". They ALL say that.
I would tell them all- Then bring your buyer by BEFORE list with you & if a sale results, I will pay you a 3% buyers commission. That will weed the ones who really do not have a buyer.

I understand your frustration because once you list your house with promises, you want the REA to deliver. Tough market kills any lame promises that an agent makes.
Your displacing your dead RE market on the realtor. That is not to say that maybe he was lazy & hoped that the house would sell itself.

I had experience with many realtors like that. They take your listing. Maybe do an Open House. Maybe run an ad & wait for things to happen. Unfortunately in a tough market nothing happens. Buyers are very picky. They weed through the internet & see what catches their eye. If your listing doesn't stand out OR your price is not one of the lowest, you'll get passed by. Just the facts, Jack.

My pet peeve with REA is that you cannot get a hold of them, or you get their ditzy, unlicensed secretary who cannot legally answer any questions. That is one of the reasons, I chose to sell FSBO/Flat Fee MLS. I had my cell phone on 24/7 & completely controlled the showings. The REAs boycotted my listing. Too bad for them, they didn't get a commission. I sold it FSBO.

xamsx - What a great idea regarding the flyers. I'm sure they will love that.
Thanks.

I'm not a realtor. I'm a kitchen designer who has had a lot of experience in helping folks prep their homes for sale. You'd think that the national exposure of HGTV would make "maintained, clean, and decluttered" not have to be mentioned. Not true. People have a hard time envisioning other's viewpoint of their lives. Those 5oo Hummel figurines, stacks of gardening magazines, chandelier with only 1 functioning bulb, cracked sidewalk, leaning fence, shabby stained carpet and Colonial brass fixtures are part of the details of their everyday lives, and it's difficult to make the transition from living your life to actually examining your home in an objective way. The people that seem to have the most difficulty in this transition phase are usually more traditional in mindset, usually older, and have lived a lot of their life in a single location, often in a single home. Younger folks who have lived in a wide variety of locations and have a more flexible outlook on life may be irritated by the process, but it's rare that any of them take it so personally.

Dealing with such clients is extremely difficult. I recall an older gentleman who wanted a consultation on redoing his kitchen prior to selling. His real estate agent had mentioned that it showed badly, and to his credit, he actually did come in for the appointment. But, it all went downhill from there. He just "knew" everything already, and would not let me aid him in any capacity. He insisted that he had bought a "whole houseful" of cabinets 20 years ago for 10K, so that estimate alone for the rather large kitchen was me obviously trying to sucker him with huge profits. He also "knew" that oak cabinets were the most expensive and desirable of woods and that "painted cabinets are trashy". He basically wanted to totally recreate the kitchen that he already had (and which was generating the "dated" comments) and do it on a low budget of 20 years ago. I could see that even if I could get him to see that the changes I suggested would update the home better and be a better investment, that I would have to fight every single day that I had him as a client. It wasn't worth it to me, so I fired him before I even got him as a client. [grin]

Catfishsam, I'm afraid that no amount of potential income from some sources is worth the aggravation. You appear to be perilously close to becoming a much despised "toxic client" and it's usually the less experienced and hungrier folks who will deal with those type. Sometimes that's a good thing, but most of the time the professional just doesn't know what they're doing and the client ends up bulldozing right over them to the detriment of all in the situation. Open you mind before you open your mouth next time, OK bud? You might actually learn something to your benefit. Prove wrong the old adage that "you can't teach old dogs new tricks". Be smart and learn a new trick or two. It's only yourself and your family that loses if you can't. Faceless strangers on the internet don't stand to gain or lose a thing. You're the one losing right now, but you can be smart and turn it around. If you'll only open your ears and mind.

We have been very unhappy with our agent. Unfortunately we're currently stuck with him because there's a sorta-offer (offer with sale-of-home contingency, which is just hurting us because many agents just don't show houses with offers on them) on it; we can't get rid of him until the offer is resolved one way or the other. I've had to do a ridiculous amount of his work for him - designing flyers, writing ad copy, doing research, taking photos - and constantly nag and harass him into getting things done. Our house cannot be seen from the road but I had to bully him into putting up an infobox (which costs less than $10!), and he made a mess of the flyers for it. Our initial MLS/realtor.com ad was so inaccurate and badly written that I was just stunned (especially since I told him to clear it with me before he posted it); it took almost a month to get the correct pictures and information onto our listing. It's still not quite right but I had to choose my battles. I don't think he can negotiate well (we think he lost us the other offer we had because of his poor negotiating skills), we had to ask him to have either me or his broker proofread anything he wrote that represented us because his spelling and grammar are so bad, he is defensive and passive-aggressive. He doesn't seem to be networking much.

He went on and on about how "aggressive" he was in marketing but he seems to be relying 100% on the MLS-related websites (realtor.com, his agency's site, and nneren.com, the regional MLS site); we are not appearing in any of the agency's print ads (newspaper or those little weekly booklets), no mailings to other agencies have been CC:ed to us, no reported contact with the relocation companies that he said he was going to push the house with (since it's in a very convenient location for commuting to Boston and we have a big bedroom-community thing going on in this area). We have a MA MLS listing as well as a NH one, so we do show up on boston.com, but I have no idea what kind of other marketing has been done in MA. Probably squat. No one showed up for his agents' open house even with a $100 door prize offered! We do have an "incurable defect" of being about 1000 yards or so from a 4 lane highway and next door to a (very quiet and clean) small restaurant, but I should think that a really good salesperson would be able to convince other agents to get more bodies through the door so people can see what a nice house and great bargain it is, and convince the hem-and-hawers who might be teetering.

I'm thinking about taping flyers (with the address removed, but MLS# on it) up in the windows of our cars, at this point! Would this be lame?

How did we end up with such a disaster? Most of the people we called did not return our initial phone calls or show up for their scheduled interviews. Most of those who did show up for their interviews did not cough up the promised CMA or return phone calls. We hired him because he seemed to be the best of those who did actually present something, which is really rather sad. Thank goodness I said no way were we signing for the 6 months he suggested; the contract expires in just about a month. I'm going to look for the "could sell ice cubes in Anchorage in January" type. I have a couple of references to pursue, finally.

After having our house listed for almost 2 years and working with 6 different Realtors, I would have to say that many of them do NOT earn their money.
Yes, it's been a sloooow market, but we haven't seen much of an effort from most of these so-called professionals. We had to "fire" 3 of them before their listing was up because of various reasons. The last agent did not return our phone calls for 9 days. She never took any photos of the property as promised - she used the ones we initially provided her to get the listing up and running. She told us she would list the house on Craigslist, then admitted she didn't know how to post onto Craigslist, so we had to do it. She promised Open Houses once every 3 weeks; she had one in 9 weeks.
Another Realtor we had went psycho on us. We had agreed with her that Open Houses probably weren't that effective. She marketed our house for sale through various means, including Craigslist. She calls me one day to tell me she thinks that someone is stalking her and/or our house!!! What?? She says she had received an e-mail through the Craigslist ad and that 'Bob' was wondering when the next Open House was going to take place. She offended him (we later saw her e-mails) and eventually accused us of "pretending to be 'Bob', answering the Craigslist ad, trying to get her to do an Open House"! After we fired her, we contacted 'Bob', who was a real-live person that lived nearby. Showed him our house twice, but nothing came of it.
We followed the advice of our Realtors and did professional staging, painting, de-clutter, etc. We lowered the price numerous times.
We did the whole 'interviewing' process, trying to choose the best Realtor, we looked at who had numerous listings, who had been in the business for a period of time, and we even got referrals from a local attorney. Not ALL of the Realtors were incapable or totally useless, but there are many out there who really don't represent the profession that well.
We ended up paying for a flat-fee MLS listing and have also done some guerilla marketing via e-mails, Craigslist, etc. We have had 5 showings and other inquiries in the last 4 weeks, which might be slow, but is more than what we were getting with the last Realtor. We also decided to put the house up for lease, although we never really wanted to go in this direction. There has been a LOT of interest from renters, and we're close to signing up one of the prospects. It's a relo, whose company is paying for the temp housing, they're non-smokers and have no pets, so they seem to be good clients. We are, of course, going to do the usual credit/tenant check.
I think that a lot of Realtors, in today's slow market, are very hesitant to take listings, and if they do, want to spend as little $ as possible to market it. In this slow market, most homes will take longer to sell which means more advertising $$.
Good luck in your efforts.

Catfishsam: perhaps your realtor didn't lie about the buyers. You said he listed your house as a Victorian. Therefor, he was apparently under the impression that it was such a style and since you don't seem to have indicated to him otherwise, he remained clueless. He could have had several interested in an actual Victorian, all who would have immediately rejected even bothering to see your house because it would obviously NOT be the Victorian they were looking for.

Some agents (obviously) are better than others and some are downright scummy, but sometimes, often with the more mediocre agents, you have to understand that YOU will have to do some work yourself if you really want your house to sell. If you're not up to or willing to do any work at all, you have to either find an agent who doesn't send up large red flags at the beginning (like a huge mis-categorization of a house) or accept that your house may not sell fast, if at all.

Hollysprings-EXCELLENT post! My background of 20 years is as a decorator/redesigner/stager (before the word existed!) and you hit this spot on! I was very good at my job in NY. Many years ago, a very smart realtor who had hired me to work on her own home asked me if I would help with a prospective seller whose home showed VERY poorly for the market. It was my job to say all the things that she couldn't as a realtor for fear of offending a very defensive and recalcitrant client and losing the listing. My success with that listing (I went through Motrin by the case!) led to a lucrative "specialization" for my business. Right now I am dealing with my own parents who recently retired and are moved in with us- they are CONVINCED that they "gave their house away" because their realtor "should" have been able to convince "better" buyers that their home was as wonderful as they saw it. Nothing had been done in 20 years since they had remodelled when they bought the house from an estate. To their minds any remodel should be looked at as new FOREVER. Also, I constantly had to reiterate that as soon as you list your house, it goes from being "your home" to "a house". Anything that you've done for your own personal lifestyle or ease or pleasure has to be rethought for "the masses" that will be looking to buy.

Not only did catfishsam's realtor think it was a Victorian, apparently so did catfishsam originally. From his first post:

When we signed with the realitor, he indicated that there were a lot of people interested in Victorian homes, which is what we have.

Or did catfishsam lie to the realtor about it being a Victorian?

Here's what he'd posted later in the thread -

chisue, I agree with you. Although this house is from that time, it is not really a Victorian. It was actually a farm house at one time and then the city grew up around it.

When we list it next time I am going to insist that it not be listed as a Victorian.

I'm ASSuming that the realtor was not exactly well versed in housing styles, made the ASSumption that it was a Victorian, and catfishsam let him go with it.

The mis-categorization goes on a LOT and it never fails to drive me up the wall. I'd rather a house not have a "style" listed than to have an incorrect one up. Chances are, if you're looking by style of house, you're going to know what is and is not said style, so the realtor gains nothing but looking slightly stupid.

And yes, there are a lot of houses that defy black and white categories, but I'm talking about the easy to classify basics like don't call a ranch a "Tudor charmer" just because it's got some stucco and contrasting trim.

Like this house that is listed on our MLS as a "Gorgeous Mediterranean Style Home!"?

{{gwi:2048786}}

Umm, just because it has arched windows doesn't mean it is mediterannean styled.

Oh yeah, the "old world charm" is all OVER that one, terriks!

That house is actually a couple of blocks away from me. It does have some nice touches, solid wood stained doors, etc., but it backs up to a busy street, which is getting busier with more new homes going in, and they combined the laundry room with a powder room for guests to use on the main floor.

and catfishsam let him go with it.

Then there are only two possibilities. Catfishsam really didn't understand that his house wasn't a Victorian until Chisue pointed it out to him, in which case his answer to Chisue is a prevarication in that it suggests he did know and does not now want to look uninformed. Or he did know all along as you suggest and was happy to go along with his realtor in order to mislead any chump buyers ignorant enough not to know the difference as the mere catagoration of Victorian probably is felt to add some money to the price.

Either way, whether or not everybody does it, it does not pass the Sunday School test.

Catfishsam, isn't there anyone you know who might refer you to a real estate agent they've had good experiences with? Perhaps that would result in a good experience for yourself.

Others may have suggested this above, but I haven't had time to read through all the responses, will come back and do so later.

Nat

hollysprings, both my wife and I were very nice to our realtor. We didn't tell him we were firing him. We just told him we were taking it off the market since it wasn't being shown.

So we were very tactfull so not to hurt his feelings.

He may not have been dishonest? Perhaps he was just not a good realtor?

We are checking into some others. What we want is a realtor that has some get up and go so we have a better chance to sell the house.

It sounds like quite a few people on here have had negative experiences with their realtors.

I believe that when you are not satisfied with your realtor, the best thing to do is to get another realtor as soon as possible.

Why waste valuable time with a second rate realtor?

Maybe your new realtor will be great and get your house sold?

A note on signing up with realtor.com! We have been house-hunting for six months now and are finally narrowing in on a few houses that we would like to check out. A realtor told us that he already knew that we were checking out the listing for one of these houses multiple times because when you sign up for an account on realtor.com they send your info to the listing agent! Ack! How unfair is this, right? This means that when you finally show up at the door of the house you really like and have drooled over a thousand times, ready to play your cards close to your chest with the selling agent and negotiate the best deal for yourself, he already knows how interested you really are in the house! Though I understand the benefit to realtors, I think this information exchange stacks the deck a little too much against buyers, so I'd like to caution everyone against actually creating an account there-- you can still look around all you want, you just can't save listings!

Also, we just had to fire our realtor last week. It was such a difficult thing to do; he had shown us at least 20 properties and we stuck it out with him because we felt that his work deserved compensation. The problem was that in the process of working for us he managed to tick off every realtor that we dealt with, which meant that every bid we put in on a house turned into a battle between him and the other realtor about matters that only affected the realtors and not us (like one listing where the selling realtor didn't post the 'pending' on MLS until 2 days late-- not a big deal to us, since the house was pending anyways!; our realtor turned him in to the realtor board!), which made all the deals go sour and has left us homeless soon in the process!
Then twice during these last couple of weeks he refused to show us houses at all because he was out of town and (yes, he actually told us this) didn't want to have to split his commission with another agent who could show us around. Since our current home is closing now in 2 weeks, that was really the last straw.

As someone mentioned above, at least one learns from these experiences! We phoned another well-recommended realtor, gave her the run down on our need to have an agent readily available because we would need to act soon, and we've had great luck with her. We've found a place, she has developed a GREAT rapport with the seller's agent, and everyone is coming out of this sale feeling good about it. What more can I ask for?

Good luck with your home shopping, everyone!

Jane

Jane, you had an aggressive realtor that caused you problems.

Our realtor was just the opposite since he was too passive.

So in both cases, the reators should have been fired.

Maybe bad realtors will be forced to find jobs they are better qualified for if we fire them for not performing?

Good thought. As they say, a bad restaurant in Manhattan will never survive because people just won't go there. The trouble is that you can always push away a bad dish of pasta but with realtors once you realize that they're not representing you well you're likely to be knee deep in a contract and THIS close to purchasing or selling your home. It's tough to start all over again and hope the new realtor is better!

I wonder if a site like Angie's List allows people to recommend realtors-- that would be a great resource for people, wouldn't it?

We were only off the market for a couple of weeks.

We found a new realtor that is everything that our old realtor wasn't. She is friendly, helpful, and energetic.

She is also really pushing selling our house and thinks she can sell it fairly easy.

She also uses more marketing tools than the old realtor. She is putting a vitural tour on the site and a talking house.

Her pictures are very good and make the house look much better.

She also measured the house and found out that the square footage was understated. So now our price per square foot is very reasonable.

So we are very pleased with our new realtor and think we have a chance to sell the house now.

So we made a wise decision to fire our bad realtor and get a good one.

If your realtor is not performing, just fire him or her and get someone that will sell your house. Maybe you will luck out like we did.

Yay! :-)

Wishing you lots of luck, and looking forwarding to reading how things turn out,

Nat

We put our house on the market in 1991 with a realtor who was an old friend (but we hadn't had a lot of contact with her for the few years prior to 1991).

When she came to get the listing, she had no comps nor any numbers to give us an idea of what we would net. This bothered us, but we decided to cut her some slack since she was a friend.

She brought us a buyer who was an engineer buying his first house and was doing everything by the book. We could see he didn't love the house. Had to ask all sorts of stupid questions. Our mortgage was assumable with about 20% down but he was going FHA. Tax laws then in effect allowed us to not pay a capital gains tax if we sold withing two years of buying our new house (which we had purchased in another state 20 months earlier so we had four months to sell). We decided that we didn't want to take a chance by selling to him as he was someone who would find any little thing to back out if the FHA appraisal gave him the opportunity. We told her to find another buyer as time was running out. The engineer made an offer about 10% below list price. She still didn't have numbers for us to show what we would net with that offer and met DH and me at my office to present the offer. She had another showing of the house scheduled but didn't get through the offer soon enough so DH had to run home to be there when the other prospects showed up.

We countered, but engineer didn't take it. She offered to cut her commission since the buyer was her commission also. We really didn't want to sell to the guy, no matter what the numbers worked out to be as we felt that it just wouldn't happen and time was awasting.

Oh, also, she had a broker's open house, but she was out of town for it. Her office listed the wrong address so no one showed up.

After three days of telling her that she had until three days to lose the guy and start concentrating on a good buyer, she hadn't done anything. So, we fired her.

We listed it ourselves, put a photo in the newspaper, the realtor who sold us the house saw it in the paper, brought us a couple who loved the house and made an offer which we accepted 4 days after we fired the first realtor.

The engineer buyer, after we fired the realtor, told her he wanted to see the house again (about the 4th or 5th time). She convinced us to let him see it. By then we had our own sign up. He came with the brother and then decided no, the garage was too small.

She had taken photos of the house for an album and complained that she had spent $300 so far marketing. I paid her $300 and asked that she give us the photo album. Never got it.

Needless to say, we never saw her again. I think she had a drinking problem as nothing ever got done after 6 p.m. as she was always "enjoying" her wine then.