Getting out of Real Estate Contract-Legally??? (feedback, venting, new agent, mortgage)

[aomething]

My husband and I listed our 2bd/1.5 bath 3 level Townhouse/Condo in July 2007 with Coldwell Banker. We started at $214,900 and then lowered after a month per agents suggestion to $204,900. We lowered again after another month to $199,999. We have been at this price since.

Our problem is the lack of communication from our agent. We agreed on phone calls and emails. What is upsetting is that we had a showing on September 15th (we were out of town the whole weekend and said the house would be available for showings and open houses), and an open house on the 16th of September. He called us on the 16th to tell us that the open house had 1 person and that when we were ready we could head home. After that that day, we didn't hear from him again until October 9th (26days later), saying that he had a showing scheduled for the next day. We are really flexible when it comes to the showings, as I work from home and can work around my agent coming in.

The only time we hear from this agent is either when he wants to lower the price or he has a showing. We cannot afford to lower the price much more, and if we do, we will end up owing more than the mortgage and won't be able to afford the closing costs, etc...

We are trying to sell to get closer to husband's work, which is now 2 hours away.

Today, we had an open house, the agent showed up 5 minutes before the open house (no open house signs up before the time that he showed up...another issue!) The open house was for an hour and a half. He left at 2:20, now if I am correct, he was there for 1.5 hours but left before the 2:30 timeframe that the open house was to end. By the way, no one showed up for the open house (we were watching from a neighbors driveway).

We don't believe that he's doing much to help us sell. He makes a little effort but, we repeatedly ask that the open house signs go up at least 2 days before (we have asked before and he complied and we had 5 people show up), so we can see that it's the lack of marketing that is part of the problem.

It's now 6:20pm (we've been home since 2:25) and he hasn't called us to tell us how the open house went. Should we call him?

We want to know how we can handle getting out of our contract which ends in January 2008, without having problems doing so. We want to do it legally. Also, I have spoken with a few other people who know agents in the area and they all say to call the agent's Broker and discuss the lack of communication (our biggest problem) and lack of or little effort from our agent to sell our condo.

Can anyone advise? We live in Massachusetts.

Thankyou

[gbone]

Sounds like you've got an incompetent agent. I would go directly to the Principal Broker and explain exactly what has happened. He should arrange for another agent to work with you who is competent and markets aggressively or you should ask to have your contract voided so you can go with another agency.
I am curious about a few things. Is there a written marketing plan that you have agreed to and has been followed? What internet marketing has been done? What print marketing has been done? How were the open houses advertised? The lack of communication is embarrassing. At the same time, I'm surprised you have gone so long without appropriate communications without doing something yourself.
I'd be interested to find out how the Principal Broker handles this once you have met with him/her. Good luck.

[aomething]

Very little print marketing. We received a post card back in July 2007, but nothing else has been shown to us. The open house is never in the local paper (we get the paper...) so we know he's not advertising. We have asked on numerous occassions to have the open house signs out early (so people can kinda plan when to do the open houses.... something we try to do when we want to look at houses or things in the area, we plan by looking for many open houses on the same day. Our agent advertises strictly by Internet. I know that in this day and age that is the way to go, but when we found this place, it was by driving by and calling the agents number.

Any way, I have been trying to get my husband to agree to call the broker but it's hard as he isn't confrontational and it has to be both of us to agree to do this. Otherwise I'm fighting a losing battle.

Husband is on phone with agent now. Asked how the open house went. It's been 5 hours since it ended and we had to call him. He said he sent an email. Nothing has arrived. We're calling Broker tomorrow, that's for sure!

Thankyou for your advice. We will have to wait and see what happens tomorrow.

[Roselvr]

Originally Posted by aomething

My husband and I listed our 2bd/1.5 bath 3 level Townhouse/Condo in July 2007 with Coldwell Banker. We started at $214,900 and then lowered after a month per agents suggestion to $204,900. We lowered again after another month to $199,999. We have been at this price since.

I can feel your frustration, especially on the open house. You need to make sure they are putting it on the MLS. I gave my agent 2 weeks notice for open houses, and expected to see the open house icon at realtor.com but never did. I also checked other sites, of course it wasn't listed as open.

What I always suggest to someone selling their house (I do this myself) is I will sign up at all of the major real estate sites (this will be c/p from a post I made elsewhere)
Major real estate sites
Realtor.com main search - click advanced search to get more options
Caldwell Banker
Century 21
ReMax
ReMax find an office
Weichert

Make an account at all of the sites. Put in your search criteria (which is similar to your house on beds/bath, give a generous price range for high and low) then save the search. You will get emails when new listings come on as well as price drops. Every site is different and in order to see what buyers see, you want to sign up at as many sites as you can. If there are local agents, see if they have a site. This will tell you if your agent is doing their job, advertising opens as well as doing something to refresh your listing every now & then.

For someone selling, you then want to put your MLS number in their search box, if your house comes up, save it to your profile. This will allow you to see every time your agent does something, such as price drop or new photos. You will now see what other buyers searching in your area sees.

This is especially helpful if you are not getting a lot of traffic, because now it becomes a question of why. It could be that your agent doesn't share their listings with other sites or your agent is not "refreshing" the data so that people signed up are not seeing your house come in via email on a regular basis.

Also be sure to check out your realtor.com page. Do you have enhanced listings with multiple pictures?

[titaniummd]

Originally Posted by aomething

My husband and I listed our 2bd/1.5 bath 3 level Townhouse/Condo in July 2007 with Coldwell Banker. We started at $214,900 and then lowered after a month per agents suggestion to $204,900. We lowered again after another month to $199,999. We have been at this price since.

Our problem is the lack of communication from our agent. We agreed on phone calls and emails. What is upsetting is that we had a showing on September 15th (we were out of town the whole weekend and said the house would be available for showings and open houses), and an open house on the 16th of September. He called us on the 16th to tell us that the open house had 1 person and that when we were ready we could head home. After that that day, we didn't hear from him again until October 9th (26days later), saying that he had a showing scheduled for the next day. We are really flexible when it comes to the showings, as I work from home and can work around my agent coming in.

The only time we hear from this agent is either when he wants to lower the price or he has a showing. We cannot afford to lower the price much more, and if we do, we will end up owing more than the mortgage and won't be able to afford the closing costs, etc...

We are trying to sell to get closer to husband's work, which is now 2 hours away.

Today, we had an open house, the agent showed up 5 minutes before the open house (no open house signs up before the time that he showed up...another issue!) The open house was for an hour and a half. He left at 2:20, now if I am correct, he was there for 1.5 hours but left before the 2:30 timeframe that the open house was to end. By the way, no one showed up for the open house (we were watching from a neighbors driveway).

We don't believe that he's doing much to help us sell. He makes a little effort but, we repeatedly ask that the open house signs go up at least 2 days before (we have asked before and he complied and we had 5 people show up), so we can see that it's the lack of marketing that is part of the problem.

It's now 6:20pm (we've been home since 2:25) and he hasn't called us to tell us how the open house went. Should we call him?

We want to know how we can handle getting out of our contract which ends in January 2008, without having problems doing so. We want to do it legally. Also, I have spoken with a few other people who know agents in the area and they all say to call the agent's Broker and discuss the lack of communication (our biggest problem) and lack of or little effort from our agent to sell our condo.

Can anyone advise? We live in Massachusetts.

Thankyou

I would personally fire that person. I would be contacting the agency and telling them if they don't find me another agent, I am taking the house off of the market.

[Roselvr]

Originally Posted by aomething

We have asked on numerous occassions to have the open house signs out early (so people can kinda plan when to do the open houses.... something we try to do when we want to look at houses or things in the area, we plan by looking for many open houses on the same day.

I wanted to reply to this before but forgot. I require the OH sign to be out the Monday before, or Sunday night for Monday morning traffic. I would go to the agents office to pick them up myself as well as getting directionals.

Originally Posted by aomething

Any way, I have been trying to get my husband to agree to call the broker but it's hard as he isn't confrontational and it has to be both of us to agree to do this. Otherwise I'm fighting a losing battle.

Consider a fax. I had a problem with our last agent releasing our house. At this time it was almost 2 weeks after the contract expired & I'd sent emails with her telling me it was released. Anyway, I got the fax number for the broker & typed out a letter saying that I wanted so & so by business start the next day. If you do fax a letter, be straight about what is bothering you and suggest a fix that would make you happy. Also be sure to give a time limit.

Originally Posted by aomething

Husband is on phone with agent now. Asked how the open house went. It's been 5 hours since it ended and we had to call him. He said he sent an email. Nothing has arrived. We're calling Broker tomorrow, that's for sure!

There is no excuse for not getting feedback within an hour, especially if the agent brings a laptop with him & you provide him with a connection. They can type out an email during the open house to let you know how it went. My problem with our 1st OH was that our's ended at 4 - I hadn't heard from the agent by 7pm so I emailed. By morning, I hadn't gotten a reply & tried emailing again. I then called at noon. We then played phone tag until almost 24 hours after I sent the 1st email. This is unacceptable in my book.

If you want to be let out of the contract and find another agency to sell your house, I have a post called Agent Questions for sellers, which you can use as a guide for interviewing agents once you narrow it down.

To find an agent, I would start at realtor.com, doing as I said in my last post, then looking at listings that are enhanced. Since print ads are important to you, you can then google the MLS number to see how many times it comes up. Also check your local news paper, most have online ads. You can also cross -reference with the local real estate books, which from what I've seen are also on line. While I know that these real estate book don't usually bring in buyers, I do like an agent that does some kind of advertising in the local paper. I like price drops & open houses advertised, OH's from Friday to Sunday, price drops Sunday only is fine.

If you visit my questions post, be sure to read some of the other posts as there were good suggestions, which can help you tailor them to what your needs are. For me, I wanted to use ReMax because as a buyer I found their web site the easiest to use. You might like one of the other sites better. Be sure to use them all to see how user friendly they are.

[aomething]

Thankyou all for your advice. We got a phone call this morning at 10:45am asking if our agent can do a showing at 2:30pm. Sure, why not? But, this is making it so much harder to find a reason to fire him. As long as he's doing the bare minimum, in the state of MA, we don't have a case to fire him and ask for a new agent OR go to another company. So, we are stuck right now, as long as he keeps bringing in the people to see the house. He told us about a showing for Thursday at 4:15pm. I think he was going to wait until Wednesday to ask about Thursdays showing time. UGHHHHH!! So frustrated!! I have at least a two page letter describing what he hasn't done to help sell our condo, that I am prepared to send to his Office Manager. But, with him bringing in people, I don't have a leg to stand on.

Thankyou for letting me vent! I am absolutely madder than ****, but there is not much that I can do about this right now, right? Still no email from last night when he said he sent one. Hmmm, what to do ????

[gbone]

Originally Posted by aomething

Thankyou all for your advice. We got a phone call this morning at 10:45am asking if our agent can do a showing at 2:30pm. Sure, why not? But, this is making it so much harder to find a reason to fire him. As long as he's doing the bare minimum, in the state of MA, we don't have a case to fire him and ask for a new agent OR go to another company. So, we are stuck right now, as long as he keeps bringing in the people to see the house. He told us about a showing for Thursday at 4:15pm. I think he was going to wait until Wednesday to ask about Thursdays showing time. UGHHHHH!! So frustrated!! I have at least a two page letter describing what he hasn't done to help sell our condo, that I am prepared to send to his Office Manager. But, with him bringing in people, I don't have a leg to stand on.

Thankyou for letting me vent! I am absolutely madder than ****, but there is not much that I can do about this right now, right? Still no email from last night when he said he sent one. Hmmm, what to do ????

There is actually a lot you can do right now. IMO, based on what you have posted, you are not getting a satisfactory professional level of service. If you can live with this that is obviously your decision and that is what you are doing. Keep in mind that what your agent is doing or not doing to market your home is competing against other agents and homes they have listed.
I don't mind your venting here but I think you might feel a lot better and get better service if you vented to your agent. Let your agent know what you expect at a minimum with relation to communications, marketing, status reports, timliness, etc.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

[Roselvr]

Very true. The bad part is time is money, and in this market it could be a lot of money lost due to what he is not doing.

I would speak to the broker and ask for another agent

[aomething]

We sent an email to the agent and CC'd his office manager. He called this morning and wants to meet tonight to discuss the "issues". Here is the email - minus the agent's name, what we sent. We were very cordial and polite and there was no name calling. We want to find a way to resolve this, my way would be to get out and go somewhere else.

Let me know what you think of the email:

[SIZE=2]"We have some issues that we would like to discuss with you. The house being on the market for over 100 days, and we are becoming frustrated with a few things. We offer this up from our perception of how this time has gone. We understand that we do not know everything that you are doing behind the scenes, and can only comment on what we see and experience.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=2]We feel that there is a lack of communication between us. Rarely do you freely offer input to us, if we want to find out any information (i.e results of individual & open showings) it seems like we always have to contact you (and with that reminder, how did the 2:30pm showing on Sunday, October 21st go? and we still haven't received the email from Saturday October 20th). At times the information from the showings could/would be useful, such as our neighbor working on his vehicle made one couple uneasy and eventually made them decide to purchase elsewhere. We received this information WEEKS after they made their decision, and again, were only told because we made the repeated inquiries to you. We need to receive any/all information from these showings, good or bad. If there are issues then we can work to alleviate them. If there are good points we can work on duplicating or expanding upon them. There have been some showings that we received more information about the results by talking with our neighbors.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=2]Now, the neighbors were able to supply more information because they were nearby when the showing happened. This brings us to a second issue; when we interviewed you we explained our concerns about private showings (specifically: a friend of ours that was selling her house had a couple come in to look at the house and had items of theirs damaged. To us, the buying agent has no concern or allegiance to the house the buyers are looking at, so they could care less what the buyers do to it, and items found within it. A selling agent would have some concern for what happens to the house, because it affects their client). You relieved these fears by assuring us that you, or a fellow Coldwell Banker agent, would be present for all showings. We felt confident with this situation until the showing we recently had on [/SIZE][SIZE=2]October 11th. The showing was scheduled for 11:45am. My wife brought our son to his bus stop for school and then returned back to the house to finish a light cleaning. When she returned to the parking lot at 11:20am she found the front door open and two ladies inside the house (Jenn assumed that the buyer agent and client had arrived 30 minutes early, and let themselves in). After she pushed for identification, my wife found out it was indeed the Buying Agent with her prospective Buyer. This [/SIZE][SIZE=2]Agent did not identify herself, nor leave a card. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=2]Heading back to communication there are times that we do not hear from you for weeks, the most recent the 2nd half of September & 1st week of October (that was over 3 weeks!). We agreed on staying in touch via-phone calls and emails for communication. We aren't expecting a daily check-in , but perhaps at least once a week to hear how things were going, even if it means there was nothing, we would still like a courtesy contact. The only times that we hear from you is when you have a private showing or to lower the asking price. Things like [/SIZE][SIZE=2]Open House showings have only been scheduled around upon our request, there have been no suggestions from you to schedule one.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=2]Concerning the Open House showings, we are concerned about the aggressiveness of the advertising for these. As we have talked about in the past, when the notification is posted at the house in advance of the open house we have had more interest. Case in point: there have been 5 showings: 1st - signs were placed at the roadside several hours before the showing, and there was 4 individual/couples. 2nd - signs placed at the roadside just before the showing, and there was 0 visitors. 3rd - We requested signs placed earlier (both on the "permanent sign, and the temporary ones - we did get the "permanent" one) we had 2 visitors. 4th - Sign was placed on the "permanent" sign again - 1 visitor. 5th - No "permanent" sign posted, and roadside temporaries were placed about 15 minutes before the showing - 0 visitors. The track record shows that we need to have something posted on the "permanent" sign several days before the showing, and possible temporary sign posted several hours before the showing. If we need to assist with placing those sign then we are more then willing. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=2]Since we mentioned the "permanent" sign, we also wanted to discuss moving that sign to a more optimal viewing location. The current location is really only viewable when going South on Rt 1A, the view going North on Rt 1A is blocked by the large tree in the front. If the sign was moved to the other side of the tree it is much easier to see it. (We know this because that is where the signs have been posted by former neighbors in these condominiums). The "permanent" sign location (and Open House signage) we have mentioned several times, but haven't been able to get our points across. If the sign is moved, they can contact my wife (she is home most days) and she can show them exactly where we think it would make the most impact.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=2]We welcome your response and comments, and look forward to finding a solution for these issues."[/SIZE]


So, any thoughts? Think it was nice??