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Do we have unreasonable expectations of our realtor? Advice needed.
We hired a realtor recommended to us by MIL (this woman helped IL's sell and buy their current home, helped BIL buy his current home, and helped other BIL buy and sell his home). MIL highly raved about this woman so we figured, why not just use her.
She is very sweet. When the local market slowed down, she dropped down to part time and works retail the rest of the week to balance out her personal budget.
However, I feel like she isn't doing enough for us, but I have no idea what reasonable expectations of a realtor really are. We bought our house 9 years ago and it was a totally different situation then. We were just buying and the whole process was over in 2 months. That was also well before the time that everyone emailed and texted, everything was done by phone, and we were never out of touch w/our realtor more than 2 or 3 days at a time.
So, our house has been on the market for about 60 days now. We had one open house in November before Thanksgiving, one private showing, and we are having a second open house tomorrow. I know the market slows down around the holidays, that isn't part of my problem. The problem that we are having is that we never hear from our realtor unless we contact her first. We have seen some potential houses to buy but they were all in a list that I emailed her to look into for us. Besides the list of houses that she sent me initially to get an idea of comps in our neighborhood, she hasn't sent any houses for us to consider scheduling a showing to.
Our open house tomorrow isn't showing up online, even though she claims she sent the request in over 10 days ago.
I also emailed her once in December asking a question and she never replied until I contacted her again asking if she got the email (then all of a sudden I got 2 replies. One from the original email and one from the forwarded email.)
She was sort of wishy washy when we were pricing our house. The number that she suggested for our starting/top price was very close to our bottom line and I wasn't sure if it would look bad if we didn't have much room for negotiation. I asked her honest opinion if we could raise it up (only $3k) in the hopes that we would negotiate down to her initial number. (I want to clarify that the number she suggested was around the average number of other similar homes in our neighborhood, but none of them are as nice as ours, as upgraded as ours, or have as big of a lot as ours, and she even admitted to that.) At first she said no, then all of a sudden she leaped onto the idea as if it was such a great idea. It was really odd. Now i'm thinking if we don't sell by our contract end date, she'll probably act like it's because we over priced (when she never said that during our discussions).
Our contract with her is up on Feb 15th, so we're not long term. Moving is not a pressing matter, we were just hoping to upgrade a little bit while rates were low. I am very non-confrontational about stuff like this. I do not want to act like I know more about the real estate market than she does, but I feel like this isn't how it should be going.
Am I wrong here? Any advice? Just wait it out and hire someone else after the 15th?
Re: Do we have unreasonable expectations of our realtor? Advice needed.
After 31 cycles and two losses, we've been blessed with a healthy baby girl!
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Life of Amberley
find a new agent. the reason we chose ours over the others we interviewed is because she prides herself on being in constant communication, which is very valuable to mh and me. and sounds like it is to you. agree that you should find someone that is doing it full time, ideally.
as to when you should move on, not sure. i personally would terminate the contract in writing ASAP so i could find a good realtor who would market my house better and soon to get it sold, but it sounds like you're not in a rush and it might be less stressful for you/your personality to just let the contract end, then let her know at the end of it you don't want to continue working together since the house did not sell during the contract period.
I think some of your concerns are legitimate and others are not. But it doesn't really matter what I think because it's obvious that you are unsatisfied working with this agent, so I would find a new one. Sometimes people just don't "click" and there's nothing wrong with that.
As for the pricing issue, I have to say that if you've only had 1 scheduled showing in 60 days, it certainly appears that you are overpriced.
Bottom line--you aren't happy with her and I am not sure what she would need to do to make you 100% happy--so changing realtors is probably a good idea.
Even though you are disappointed in your realtor, chances are your price is what is causing your house to be stagnant. Even just lisiting it on the mls and doing nothing more should be brining in more traffic than 1 showing. If it is priced higher than comparables (even if it is nicer), some buyers will not even look since they might perceive that you aren't willing to negotiate much. I get having a bottom line, but you also need to have people see your home so price would be something I would seriously discuss with your next realtor.
My Valentine Bookends (2~13~13, 2~15~09)
I'd definitely be looking for a different realtor. We were working with a realtor who was similar to yours (except we were looking to buy). She would send us homes daily but I felt like we had to do the legwork to compile a list of homes we wanted to see. I guess I just felt like she should've been giving us some suggestions. We also never heard from her unless we were the ones to initiate the call/e-mail. It was disappointing because she was recommended to us by a family friend.
We're now moving out of state and have worked with an awesome realtor. She was in constant contact with us (at all hours of the day!). The only downside is, she's pregnant and on bedrest so we haven't had the chance to meet her (she has another agent from her office handling all of her showings and closings) but she wrote up our contract, addendum etc. We've been really happy with her (especially since we don't really know the area well that we're moving to).
Thanks for all replies. Just wanted to update that our open house yesterday was good afterall (even though we are still mad about our open house announcement not showing up online). We had 5 groups come through and everyone loved the house. One guy is a current renter but the other 4 have houses to sell first before they could put in offers.
All feedback on our house from everyone who has come to our 2 open houses (and the one showing) has been excellent. The realtor from the showing even left a handwritten letter saying how beautifully done it was.
For those saying we are overpriced, who should be the person that suggests dropping the price? I feel like it should be our realtor but she hasn't said anything at this point. It is not that people seeing our house are refusing to put in an offer because of the price, it is because of personal circumstances.
Often times a realtor will suggest it, but it isn't out of line for you to ask if she thinks price is contributing. She might not be suggesting it because she got the impression that you were not willing to go lower (based upon your OP).
You only had 1 showing in 60 days--most new listings have more than that in the first week alone. You HAVE to get people in the door to see your house. If your house is priced "right" for your area, you should have a lot more traffic (unless there have also been 0 sales in the past 60 days, then your problem is much bigger than price). What are you currently priced at? There tend to be "brackets" that people search in. If you can drop down to the next bracket, you will probably have a lot more traffic--which might lead to a sale.
My Valentine Bookends (2~13~13, 2~15~09)
We're priced at $192,900 right now, so anyone searching up to $200k would see our listing.
The average sale price of the last 4 comparable homes that have sold in our neighborhood is $190k.
We listed right before Thanksgiving and since then only 3 houses have sold (or had official closing). I have no idea how long they were on the market, so they could have been under contract before we listed. They were all smaller than ours with 1 less bathroom.
You'd have to drop it too much to go down to the next bracket since you are near the top of your bracket (typically searched in increments of $25K up to 300K and then it jumps to 50K etc.). Your price sounds reasonable for comps--so the next thing I'd also look at is what are the other listings asking for right now? After all, they are your competition! Don't worry too much about is yours nicer, etc. Find ones that are close to your home size/neighborhood.
Your REA can pull specific time on market, date of contract, etc. for you for the homes that sold in your area. Not that zillow is the most accurrate, but it can give you an idea of that info as well (it will have listing date and closing date).
My Valentine Bookends (2~13~13, 2~15~09)
All of the homes I mentioned in my previous reply were all in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is a mix of townhomes, twins (ours is a twin) and singles, and were all built around the same time. All of the twins are essentially the same size with the same layout, just different size yards. Older but more established neighborhood, best school district in the county. (For reference.
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Right now there are only 3 comp homes in our neighborhood for sale, average list price is $188k. 2 of those 3 homes have exteriors that look dated.
As a side note, i'm sort of wondering if stuff is moving slower in our area because alot of local lenders are requiring that most buyers have already sold their current home before they'll let them borrow again (did I word that right?) Thoughts on that?