Need Realtor out for blood (Aurora, Orland Park: for sale, real estate, foreclosures)

[PicoHairpiece]

Hi everyone,

We're first time buyers with excellent credit and we just got preapproved for $250,000. We're looking for a realtor who's been in the business before the bubble (that is before 2001), and is certified in handling foreclosures.

Houses are still overpriced and we want you to help us with this transaction. We want someone unafraid to lowball where it truly deserves it. Our areas of interest are Bartlett, Carol Stream, Addison, Lombard, Itasca, Elmhurst and Bloomingdale. Thanks!

[chet everett]

There is NO SUCH THING as a buyer's agent 'certified' in foreclosures. If you want to work with an listing agent that is listing properties that the lender already owns (foreclosure certified..)such an agent has a fiduciary duty toward the lender to extract the maximum price possible.

If you want a buyer's agent that will present your offer in the best possible light to any motivated seller I would suggest that you interview several buyers agents, perhaps you will find someone that is willing to present comps from 8+ years ago, but I rather doubt it. You should know that in the grand scheme of things lenders are not overly motivated, in fact I would posit that in most places in DuPage Co any property that was not scooped up at the very well run but sparsely attended Sheriff's Foreclosure Auction is really not something that a first time buyer should be considering...

I would further suggest that you narrow your area of interest. The most effective buyers agents will generally not cover a territory as large you have indicated, nor will they be helpful in discerning between the wide range of properties that will exist in those towns at the price point you have indicated. Simply put, in some of those towns your money will not go very far at all, even with foreclosures.

You should further realize that pretty much EVERY real estate agent gets paid by the seller, and the more the selling price the more their commission, thus the most "money motivated" agent has absolutely no incentive to help you get a low price. What does motivate agents is a buyer that has a finite amount to spend and will quickly act when they are presented with information that suggests a property is properly priced and merits a quick offer. Thus it would be most helpful if you did not say you wanted an agent "out for blood" but instead wanted an expert in quickly finding and closing on a very well priced property...

Good Luck!

[PicoHairpiece]

Ok thanks for the advice.

[sgresident]

check into keith dickerson with the dickerson group..ReMax in naperville(I think) he happens to be a resident in sugar grove.

[chet everett]

Looks like the K man and Wendy specialize in towns further west: Aurora, Sugar Grove and Yorkville Illinois real estate listings,home buying, selling and relocation information -NUMBER1EXPERT(tm) Pretty clear that their "team" is high volume listing agent specialist, not going the be the sort of folks that will advocate for a buyer.

http://www.dickersonteam.com/a_team-realtors-agents-brokers.asp (broken link)

[knat_2]

I just bought a home and used Laura Alberts (Orland Park, Tinley Park, and Homer Glen, Mokena, Real Estate - Laura Alberts). She is centralized in the southern "park" area but helped us look at home all over chicago. She went for blood in both the lender arena (finding us an amazing lender who allowed us to close very quickly) and helped us negotiate with the seller quite a bit.

She has been around for a while (I think around 20 years and before she was an appraiser) and knows a TON of people. This helps you get good deals on everything from home inspection to lenders. Heck she was even good friends with the seller's realator. She even gave us access to the internal Realator listings and notes about all the homes allowing us to look at our own pace. She worked weekends, nights and was always on top of e-mail and phone calls.

I would recommend her time and time again. If you contact her, mention us (Nate and Christine). Her number is 708-220-7623 and I would recommend talking with her and see what she thinks of your situation.

PS Please tell me if you do go with her!

[MTUCache]

Just out of personal experience with buyer's agents, I think you may get a little frustrated by this process. In my experience the agents these days are more than happy to get the deal done asap, and they're not really looking out for your best interests. Sure, they'd like to keep the price reasonable (so the bank lets the financing go through), but in general they're only cutting their own commission and making more work for themselves by lowballing.

If you're going to have to constantly reign-in your agent, and constantly push them to show you (and make low offers on) more and more properties, you'd probably be better off just doing this process on your own. 75% of the work is done for you on all the MLS sites out there. A buyer's agent may have more tools to narrow down specific things about houses before you go to see them, but they're not going to be all that happy about showing you dozens of houses unless they're being listed by their own office. Again, in my experience, they're not willing to work all that hard to get you what you want just so they can get half of a bad commission. Add in the frustration with the financing (and the thousands in sellers concessions that you're looking for), and this process could take a lot of legwork on your part anyway.

If you go into this expecting to see a lot of things you don't want, expecting to get a lot of offers rejected, and expecting to have a lot of sellers' agents unhappy with you, I don't see why you couldn't do this just as easily on your own. Narrow down your search area, commit to setting up a dozen appointments per week (knowing half of them will fall through), and get out there. That's really all a buyer's agent is going to do for you anyway.

Hell, all mine did was hook me up with a website that automatically loaded all the homes in my area/price-range of interest. I still had to go through each and every listing to see if I was interested or not. By the end of the month there was easily 200 properties that I had gone through, and all the agent had done was set up the query and then schedule a half-dozen walk throughs over a weekend.

Personally I feel like the entire RE industry got exposed with this bubble. They've been making extravagent commissions on over-priced property for so long (and all those 6-7% boosts end up on a banks ledger somewhere) that they've gotten fat on it. Now when the market trims the fat and they have to start working for that money, suddenly 90% of the agents out there find they don't even know where to start. The well ran dry and now there's thousands of them that don't know where to go, they just wait for the phone to ring and then do whatever they can to close the deal (regardless of price) so they make a commission that week. The only person they're representing is themselves.

There's no way that service is worth the $12-15k price tag that gets tacked onto the house $250k house you're looking for, especially not the $5k cut of that the buyer's agent is expecting. Pretty weak sauce as far as I'm concerned, because you're going to end up doing most of their work for them anyway. The buyer's agent is already on the hook for all the paperwork, so that part of the headache is already taken care of.

[sahmommie]

I'd check out Redfin if I were you (Find All the Homes for Sale & Experienced Real Estate Agents | Redfin)

Their agents are paid based on customer satisfaction, versus most agents who are paid on commission. It makes a world of difference. They get a stipend per showing from their corporate entity, so they have no problem showing you every property that you'd ever want to see.

And they go for the jugular in negotiations.... remember, they get paid based off your satisfaction. I'm sure this sounds like some sort of ad for them, I don't work for them or anything, I'm just an extremely satisfied customer.

Good luck!

[ChiLubeck]

realtor = used home salesperson You tell them what to do, not the other way around.