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Hello and I just discovered this website and this forum and I have a question.
I am single guy trying to buy my first house. I am currently living in a basement apartment of a house and renting month-to-month. I have been looking for a house for over a year and in the last three months I have been less that happy with my realtor.
My realtor signed me to receive auto emails called from a website that all of the realtors and clients use to go see what homes are available, if the they are listed as "active", "pending", "Temporary Not Available to Show", and "sold".
Anyway, I have been looking at the list daily and I have quite a few that I would like to see. And when I contact my realtor, they say no problem and then we schedule a date and time to go look, except I get cancelled on.
My realtor has canceled on me several times in the past two months and I am frustrated. I see some very nice properties that are in my price range. Some of them have been "flipped" with a recent passing inspection from the city, which is fine for me because I won't have to do anything except move in....except I can't seem to be able to see the places.....then a month later they are sold, so I miss out on a opportunity.
I should also mention one final thing....my realtor is extended family.
What should I do???
Someone told me that house buying is supposed to be fun.....well I am still waiting for fun to start.
Yup, sounds like now is a good time to change realtors. We fired a realtor for incompetence. Our ad on a national realty website made it look like we were selling a cruddy house for twice its value! In other words, the photos of someone else's house (which, btw, was a very basic starter home) were uploaded w/ our house info.! We called and ended our contract right then and there, despite their insistence that it was not their fault. It was a last straw for us w/ them b/c they had done some other incompetent things, like failing to return phone calls in a timely manner.
I like to be in charge of my home sale and basically use the realtor for two purposes: getting me in the door to a property and getting the paperwork done. I like to do my own property searches as I know what I want and have found realtors don't really listen and yes, do rely way too much on technology.
Cancellations are never good, however they may be assuming that after 15 months and viewing several homes that could have worked for you, they may not have faith that you'll actually buy. I'm not saying it's right, but that may be what's happening.
Look, this is the most expensive investment that you will make in your life (so far).
Not only do you need to treat it as such, your Realtor needs to, as well. How many homes have you actually seen in the past three months? I think your answer will spell out what you need to do.
Asking for a referral to someone else leaves open a door that can be re-opened. I would send a nice (blonde) email note saying you just hate to keep bothering them to show you properties and you've signed with your boss's wife when the last appointment was cancelled. I say "blonde" because you want the tone that you want to relieve their burden from you bothering them at every turn. I say boss's wife (sister-in-law) etc, because in this day and age, keeping the job happy is critical. Just make sure it's not an agent in the same office or any office your relative has been working for recently.
You are getting ready to commit yourself to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. You are already having trouble with your most important link in the transaction. Act on it!
You can ease the family situation by letting him refer you to another agent. Tell him you've found you're just comfortable mixing business and family.
Excellent advice. You also may sit down and have a heart to heart when you do this and let him no exactly why. While home buying is fun it is also one of the more stressful activities people go through in their lives. Your agent, family or not, should be helping ease that stress.
I would either sit down and have the 'heart to heart' or take Brandon's advice and ask for a referral.
I'm in the process of buying my first home right now and I also stopped working with my first realtor. I felt like he didn't take me seriously or listen to me when I talked about what I was looking for in a house. He would always send me listings that lacked some of the features I considered to be important (a garage and a fireplace -- i know, i know, but I also specified that I did not want a brick ranch home) but they all happened to be at the exact top of my price range. THEN, when I found something I wanted, he tried to discourage me from submitting an offer because it was short sale, even though I was completely aware of the fact that short sale isn't as easy as a 'regular' transaction. I sort of think he didn't want to bother with it because it was priced below the top of my price range.
Fast forward to today: I close on Sept 30th and the realtor I've been working with has been very attentive and professional even though I'm spending about 70K less than my maximum. But yeah, house hunting wasn't exactly 'fun' with the first realtor.
Just for perspective, $70k is a pretty big gap to a buyer, but not much on the commission swing...
I am glad to here that you found a home that suits you. I really doubt your real estate agent was concerned about yiu not maxxing out your budget.
Just for kicks let's say you told 'em your top was $280k. That would have netted about $8400 at full commission rates for the buyers agent. If you instead found a place that met all your needs was only $210k the commission would still have been $6300. Yes it is less, but I really doubt that is why the any even borderline not so sane agent would push on a buyer...
More likely the underpriced place, as a short sale, had too many sings of the deal being unlikely to get to close. While it does sound like yiu made it there I do wonder how much extra time that took, and if the time spend helping you shop made the agent feel like they were unable to help clients that may have had a short (which translates to less costly...) timeline...
I would also hope that yiu recognize the biggest factor in future price stability (and hopefully potential for appreciation) comes from LOCATION, and if the more expensive home(s) were / are in a better area then the recommendation to stretch your budget was every bit intended to help you out,far more so than any minor difference in commission...
Of course it is possible that the first agent was a load, andinthat case it w good to drop him. Too bad yiu wasted time with him in the first place...
Quote:
Originally Posted by cowboyxjon
I would either sit down and have the 'heart to heart' or take Brandon's advice and ask for a referral.
I'm in the process of buying my first home right now and I also stopped working with my first realtor. I felt like he didn't take me seriously or listen to me when I talked about what I was looking for in a house. He would always send me listings that lacked some of the features I considered to be important (a garage and a fireplace -- i know, i know, but I also specified that I did not want a brick ranch home) but they all happened to be at the exact top of my price range. THEN, when I found something I wanted, he tried to discourage me from submitting an offer because it was short sale, even though I was completely aware of the fact that short sale isn't as easy as a 'regular' transaction. I sort of think he didn't want to bother with it because it was priced below the top of my price range.
Fast forward to today: I close on Sept 30th and the realtor I've been working with has been very attentive and professional even though I'm spending about 70K less than my maximum. But yeah, house hunting wasn't exactly 'fun' with the first realtor.
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Just for perspective, $70k is a pretty big gap to a buyer, but not much on the commission swing...
