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As far as the number of bedrooms goes - is there a law in Texas saying that a room can only be called a bedroom if it has a closet? Or can any room be called a bedroom if that's what the realtor wants to advertise it as?
And I finally realized when one poster (who said he used to be a realtor) said "fudging can worm around a little bit, or as far as reason/laws will allow" that unfortunately it's considered okay - and apparently just business as usual - to fudge and worm around with numbers because there's the whole "it was a typo; someone else told me that number and I'm just repeating it; it's your fault for not checking, not mine; go ahead and sue, you won't win" mindset involved.
This thread has been quite an education for me about Texas real estate law and ethics.
That poster was myself....and, as I said, our listing sheets themselves had disclaimers on the bottom, which I always thought peculiar.
The good news is you can't fudge very much without being noticed, especially per individual room sizes. I would say 5-7% max, per fudging. A simple solution would be to have access to the original blueprints of the house, which should legally be attached to home listings in the current broadband internet era. Most every residence has those laying around somewhere, and it should be simple for an agent to upload the same to the net, along with other public access MLS info like taxes....or are taxes
hiding behind the MLS wall as well?
I have a neighbor who has been a realtor for a long time, and he indicated that there is a drop-down list of 'sources' to annotate the square footage value. It does not appear that the cited source is listed on the public MLS, though, at least on AustinHomeSearch anyway. You could probably ask what the source was, though, from the listing agent (I forget whether you said this house was listed in the MLS or not). Anyway, he said he almost always ends up using TCAD or a builder spec data sheet of some sort. If your realtor has referenced one of these, you are (imho) kind of out of luck, although it would be very odd that it would be off by that much. If the source as listed as 'supplied by the owner' or something similar, you may have a route to complain about misrepresentation (possibly intentional).
Personally, I cannot imagine holding a realtor responsible for verifiying the square footage when he is neither the builder, owner, or tax authority. It just opens him/her up to all sorts of liability issues stemming from the same issues brought up above. On the other hand, I would suspect that my friend would possible notice a 20% difference in the listed square footage of a house and possible question the source if it was NOT TCAD or builder. Again, though, if this was a lease house, it is likely that the realtor just glanced at the house unless they were looking to sell it.
As for bedrooms, that is a good question, but I suppose almost any room can be a 'bedroom'. 60s houses (and older) often have no closests at all in the bedrooms. I would assume that a door would be required? Anyway, a den with a door, or an AV room could be easily made into a bedroom.
Just thinking about this, I wonder if maybe there was not a building plan filed for expanding this house by adding another bedroom plus some additional space (bathroom, etc). It may be possible (I have no idea, though) that TCAD picked up the expansion plans and incorporated them into the tax database, and then the expansion did not occur....
As far as the number of bedrooms goes - is there a law in Texas saying that a room can only be called a bedroom if it has a closet? Or can any room be called a bedroom if that's what the realtor wants to advertise it as?
And I finally realized when one poster (who said he used to be a realtor) said "fudging can worm around a little bit, or as far as reason/laws will allow" that unfortunately it's considered okay - and apparently just business as usual - to fudge and worm around with numbers because there's the whole "it was a typo; someone else told me that number and I'm just repeating it; it's your fault for not checking, not mine; go ahead and sue, you won't win" mindset involved.
This thread has been quite an education for me about Texas real estate law and ethics.
as consumers it is disappointing to hear agents like steve who are so embedded in their obnoxious system that they think it is actually ok. Is it commonly known that sq footage can vary by 20% and that this is acceptable? Ask 100 homeowners and I would bet >95% would say that this is not how it works today. What this means is that the real estate profession has done an incredibly poor job at communicating this fact and probably because it works to their advantage. Realtors(tm) are supposed to have the highest ethical standards this clearly shows that is not the case, yet they are so blinded by their own standard operating procedures they cant even see it.
as consumers it is disappointing to hear agents like steve who are so embedded in their obnoxious system that they think it is actually ok. Is it commonly known that sq footage can vary by 20% and that this is acceptable? Ask 100 homeowners and I would bet >95% would say that this is not how it works today. What this means is that the real estate profession has done an incredibly poor job at communicating this fact and probably because it works to their advantage. Realtors(tm) are supposed to have the highest ethical standards this clearly shows that is not the case, yet they are so blinded by their own standard operating procedures they cant even see it.
As I said, I think the entire RE profession, on a national, state, and local basis(BTW, all their "Boards" are based on those same three groupings, per NAR, state commissions, and local MLS's), are due for a 100%, complete, total overhaul.....top to bottom.....
Per the "old days", local MLS boards were firewalls, in which treasured info would be hoarded like keys to the kingdom. This "fudging" you see is very much a vestige of those days, when RE boards had in toto control of listing info. Now that many boards are virtual and on-line, they are in the public view for all to see, flaws, warts, and all.
Questions....Do we really need RE agents and their Commissions, along with their hording or "proprietary" info, or even fudging of the same? Why can't we rehaul the biz to a "Peer-to-Peer" network, facilitated by the web, where all relevant info is transparent and readily accessed by all? If you need any info per comps, all you would have to do is pull up something on the likes of Zillow, but far more comprehensive, sort of a public trust of information......it could be run by sellers and buyers themselves, and modified on the cuff by the same, like any internet app.
Technology has always redefined business sectors and careers. Sometimes it has completely annihilated them, per typesetters, IBM card processors, you name it. More often it modifies the same, per Auto mechanics, stock traders, computer programmers, publishing, etc. RE somehow has been able to hold onto the past paradigm of MLS board firewalls and hoarding, which would not be the case with peer-to-peer transparency enabled by a communal(public commons) database. Its all collectively our homes and info, so why can't we collective store it for our own use(comps), and sell P2P with each other?
I thought that was the whole point of the WEB 2.0 revolution.......
Many people do sell without an agent. However, they often have access to a lawyer. But lawyers are a whole nuther subject. I don't know if this state has the do-it-yourself divorce but it's akin to selling your own home. One can pick up forms and information at the public library. (I'm just using that as an example)
Some professions just seem to have better job security eh?
For future reference, bring a calculator, tape measure, and a pencil and paper when you buy something big. Like when you add up the charges on a restaurant food bill. In my experience, I have found on every big deal, a math error. Just saying.
All records except his own state the square footage at 3098 square feet, that floor plan has never been built by this builder in any subdivision at any larger square footage. The home was listed in the MLS.
This was done intentionally in order for him to compete with all the other homes in the southwest area of Austin that was leasing for 2300 dollars a month. It put his listing above all others at that time. There were eight homes up for lease that he was competing with in that price range, by adding a bedroom and 700 square feet more that put his listing at the top of search number one of eight. All other homes had not less than 3200 square feet "so they said" remember this home was really 3098 square feet, the truth was this home was to high per square footage and location and would have been number eight on the list.
In Ohio the room cannot be claimed as a bedroom without a window, a opening and closing door and a closet. It can only be listed as an extra room. This all has reminded me of why it was so hard to pass that real estate exam. We have laws in real estate in Ohio, a real estate agent cannot even have their name in larger font than the brokers name anywhere in print. So telling the Ohio real commission it was a type o won’t work. The deal is cancelled and all money is returned. If I had known that all real estate agents were not held accountable to the same standards that I grew up with I would have put my used car attitude on and looked for a lease home here in Austin. I assumed that all real estate agents were held to the same laws as Ohio and most certainly a Broker. We all can lie about our real estate to sell it or lease it, We certainly don’t need to hire a real estate agent to do it for us.
Just one more thing NOTJ I was in Florida last year for about a year and I watched one real estate agent after the other, walk the retail outlet stores picking up job applications. They pulled up dress to kill in their shinning little two seater convertibles. I remember thinking man that has got to be touch, having to walk around here after making that kind of money, looking for a job knowing that they would get paid 8.00 to 10.00 dollars an hour if they were lucky.
You could tell by looking at them they had sold some million dollar condos many times over and it was easy. They took a real estate course for 850.00 dollars and made a ton of money. What I did not realize that was going on was they were not being hired and the reason they were not being hired was the manager of that retail store still was harboring a dislike for real estate agents. As a matter of fact it was a common thing not to hire one; their application went straight into the trash can. Some job listing even stated it for no real estate agents to apply.
My point to this is in other areas of the United States people have lost everything they own due to this recession, real estate bust and so forth. Sure some only lost 200,000 thousand but a lot lost everything they had and a whole lot of them sold everything they had to survive. That held true for real estate agents also; they owned condo’s rental properties as such.
The agent I am talking about here chose a different tactic to survive this recession. There was also a female real estate broker involved in the murder of the couple in the panhandle of Florida that was her tactic to survive in this recession. It’s very hard for some people to give up easy money. They are not looking to build character and they do not go down gracefully.
I would not allow this realtor nor would I pay this realtor to clean out my dog’s dog house. Although he sure as hXll can sleep in it. He bragged at one point in time that he was making 400,000 thousand a year here in Austin. He is not making that now and he is not going down gracefully. Lucky for him he is in Austin, Texas this would have started two years ago anywhere else outside of Texas.
Just one more thing NOTJ I was in Florida last year for about a year and I watched one real estate agent after the other, walk the retail outlet stores picking up job applications. They pulled up dress to kill in their shinning little two seater convertibles. I remember thinking man that has got to be touch, having to walk around here after making that kind of money, looking for a job knowing that they would get paid 8.00 to 10.00 dollars an hour if they were lucky.
You could tell by looking at them they had sold some million dollar condos many times over and it was easy. They took a real estate course for 850.00 dollars and made a ton of money. What I did not realize that was going on was they were not being hired and the reason they were not being hired was the manager of that retail store still was harboring a dislike for real estate agents. As a matter of fact it was a common thing not to hire one; their application went straight into the trash can. Some job listing even stated it for no real estate agents to apply.
My point to this is in other areas of the United States people have lost everything they own due to this recession, real estate bust and so forth. Sure some only lost 200,000 thousand but a lot lost everything they had and a whole lot of them sold everything they had to survive. That held true for real estate agents also; they owned condo’s rental properties as such.
The agent I am talking about here chose a different tactic to survive this recession. There was also a female real estate broker involved in the murder of the couple in the panhandle of Florida that was her tactic to survive in this recession. It’s very hard for some people to give up easy money. They are not looking to build character and they do not go down gracefully.
I would not allow this realtor nor would I pay this realtor to clean out my dog’s dog house. Although he sure as hXll can sleep in it. He bragged at one point in time that he was making 400,000 thousand a year here in Austin. He is not making that now and he is not going down gracefully. Lucky for him he is in Austin, Texas this would have started two years ago anywhere else outside of Texas.
Lost ONLY 200,000? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that would consider that a pretty large sum.
Lost ONLY 200,000? I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that would consider that a pretty large sum.
I agree I am crying over $2800.00, but I am also one of those people who sold it all at a loss.
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