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It's early in our selling process, but there are some concerns we are having about our realtor.
He has pushed dual agency more than once.
During staging this past weekend for an open house and viewings, nobody from his staff mentioned anything about pet odors (we have a cat whose litter is hidden in the basement), but we received negative feedback from an agent about "strong pet odors". We feel like it's possible that we wasted an entire open house and multiple separate viewings on this potential obstruction that we didn't notice ourselves. It honestly did not smell to us, or our neighbors who we asked for their opinion.
He missed a comp in our area when we were talking about setting an appropriate price. Thankfully my spouse pointed it out and sent him a link on it.
We told him that we had concerns about getting what we want for our home, but he was very optimistic about getting it listed with him. After numerous discussions with others in the market, we're not sure we'll even get what we're asking for, and we are expecting that he'll likely ask us to reduce asking price.
His broker has a system that calls and texts you about scheduling viewings for your home, but he didn't communicate this to us so we knew to be on the lookout. I had ignored some anonymous calls thinking they were spam robocalls, but they were requesting viewings of our home.
We both feel that he has sort of pressured us on settling for homes he wants us to settle on. We notice other buyers that are far more picky and scrupulous in selecting the right home, but he only showed us a couple homes before pushing us to settle on number 2 with no negotiation on anything from the seller. Meanwhile, it seems that other buyers are starting to be more picky than ever and we're always seemingly coming in from a position of desperation. This is more on us than him, but we rely on his expertise and objectivity as laymen in this process.
He advised us to go under contract on a home purchase before our house has even sold, which has only served to compound the anxiety of this process. We need to sell, or else lose out on the other house.
We've bought two homes with him, but both times were during a very hot seller's market. We suspect that the softening of the market may be exposing more of his vulnerabilities and inexperience. He's a talented sales person who always says the right things to make you feel good, but we are both concerned that he may not be giving us the full truth or working in our best interest. It's been only a week since we listed the property, but I am curious what is a generous amount of time to give him and what are things we need to keep him honest about.
let me just start with - over what period of time did you buy 2 homes with him, that then he's still "inexperienced" ... or do you mean he hasn't often listed homes for sale?
let me just start with - over what period of time did you buy 2 homes with him, that then he's still "inexperienced" ... or do you mean he hasn't often listed homes for sale?
Good point. What I mean by lack of experience is that he's younger (early to mid-30s) and I'm not sure he's sold any properties in anything other than a hot, seller's market. Things went quick two years ago, and you gave the seller everything they wanted plus a healthy markup. Now that the market has softened, and properties aren't going in a few days at $15k+ over asking, I suspect that you need to be a little more skilled in the marketing department.
You don’t need to use the same person as both listing and selling agent. Perhaps the constant familiarity is wearing you out.
Good point. This isn't anything we were particularly familiar with until we talked to agencies like Redfin, where you have a separate listing agent from the buyer agent. We just didn't really know that was a thing that people did until this time around. However, we're using a traditional agency, not Redfin at this time, so we bundled up.
If you are doing a contingency sale on one home and into another it is VERY beneficial to have the same agent involved in both, because you will need to closely manage and coordinate the closings of each so they have the right amount of overlap for you to close one, fund the other, pack, and move. It's a good thing to use the same agent in this case.
During staging this past weekend for an open house and viewings, nobody from his staff mentioned anything about pet odors (we have a cat whose litter is hidden in the basement), but we received negative feedback from an agent about "strong pet odors". We feel like it's possible that we wasted an entire open house and multiple separate viewings on this potential obstruction that we didn't notice ourselves. It honestly did not smell to us, or our neighbors who we asked for their opinion.
Some people are hypersensitive to pets. Not just the smell of pets, the existence of pets. If they can't actually smell them they will still claim to. If only one person said this, and no one else could smell it, I wouldn't worry about it.
Hopefully more later on the rest... that's all for now.
Some people have a better sense of smell than others. Generally speaking, I have found that women pick up smells better than men. So it might be that your agent genuinely doesn't smell it. Bring all of your female friends over and ask them if they can smell pet.
to add ... if your neighbors didn't smell it, and you asked them to, then I don't know how often the agent should have.
the agent should have been clear on how showings occurred with the automated system. Clearly a mistake. At the same time, you said you ignored the calls, but I'm sure they left messages, yes? and they also texted you? you ignored those as well?
to add ... if your neighbors didn't smell it, and you asked them to, then I don't know how often the agent should have.
the agent should have been clear on how showings occurred with the automated system. Clearly a mistake. At the same time, you said you ignored the calls, but I'm sure they left messages, yes? and they also texted you? you ignored those as well?
I asked my neighbors to sniff test after we received the comment. I was curious if they could smell what this other agent was claiming to have smelled at the showing earlier in the day. We asked some of our friends, too, if they genuinely thought our house has had an odor, and none of them validated the concerns.
As for the robocalls, no voicemails were left. I thought that was strange, too.
Yes, there were text messages sent, but they weren’t clear what they were about, and again, I wasn’t expecting to receive anything to approve showings because my realtor did not mention it. The text message I received said something along the lines of “CSS at [my address] To approve reply Yes, to reject reply No...yada yada yada”. I had no idea what these were, and thought they had something to do with favoriting my home on Zillow or Redfin, and it was reminding me that there was an open house this weekend for my home.
At any rate, the communication could be better in some areas. I don’t even know what our long term marketing strategy is, though I have asked for a clearer picture many times. It seems he is just sort of winging it until we get some bites. He has proposed a 2nd open house coming up, and has mentioned involvement on social media, but I don’t even know what that means because it has not been visually demonstrated to us.
Last edited by iSudo; 09-10-2019 at 09:38 AM..
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