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We originally planned to short sell our home and chose an agent with short sale experience. We then decided it was better for us to take out a signature loan to bring cash to close to sell the house without the involvement of our mortgage company. We stayed with our chosen agent, however. He advised increasing the price from what he'd suggested listing for the short sale and doing some small repairs. We wanted to wait until we'd done the repairs to list, but he listed anyway and we turned down some showings while we got things done. (About 10 days.) None of the turned down showings chose to reschedule.
We received an offer, but when the agent did the net sheet on the offered price, I was surprised how much cash we'd need, and had to find an alternative funding source rather than the signature loan from my bank. We received a second offer while I was waiting for funding to be approved.
Funding was approved on a Friday, and I verbally advised my agent that we were accepting the second offer. This was not passed on to the potential buyer. The following day, the agent advised he was expecting a third offer several thousand dollars better that afternoon and suggested we wait until it came in. It did not come that afternoon, but the following evening (now Sunday). It was not as high as expected, but was still the highest of the three. We accepted the offer. The following morning, the buyer said he changed his mind, and I asked my agent to accept the second offer (again). An hour later, the third offer buyer was on the fence, and wanted to see it, so my agent wanted to wait on accepting the second offer. We did so, the third offer buyer came to look again, and advised he was not interested the next morning. (Tuesday.)
By this time, the first offer had expired, been extended, and expired again. My agent advised that the buyer's agent would not return his calls any more. The second offer buyer advised they had changed their mind. So back to square one.
However, by this time, showings had sharply declined, and all the potential buyers who looked at it during that time had been advised we had offers on the table. Showings have continued to slow, and it's now been a full week since anyone has looked at our home. (Previously, we had 5-9 showings per week.) My agent seems very nonchalant about it. He's blamed Mother's Day, Memorial Day, and school getting out. I am wondering if the chance has passed us by, and the days on the market are now working against us (68 as of 6/12).
I took photos myself for the listing after he rescheduled coming to do it twice. I recently rewrote the description because he ignored our request that FiOS be included as a selling point. However, I didn't know about the character limit, so he trimmed out random words (it now says we have gas in the living room instead of a gas fireplace). Is it unreasonable to be irked by this?
What's the best option for us to sell after all this? The agent is contracted until the end of August. I've read advice saying you can request another agent from the broker, but my agent IS the broker for his company. We've been unhappy with his responsiveness and that he doesn't seem terribly motivated to move our property. Meanwhile, I have borrowed money sitting around, waiting to pay off the sale, and IF we get a fourth offer, I think we'll get lowballed because of the DOM and I won't have enough cash to close it.
I think the three offers proved the price is okay. We're comparable on price and price/sqft to others in the neighborhood, and we were in line with the recent sales when we listed. Dropping the price doesn't seem like a good idea to me, because then we won't have any room to negotiate with buyers, but I don't know what else to try.
Wow, I know that to a lot of "ordinary" readers here on the forum this situation will seem pretty unusual, but to those of us that have been on the real estate sales side of thing the list of "oops" here is shockingly common.
The points that should be emphasized: 1) if you going to sell in a "distressed" financial condition it is 100% vital to have ALL your financial ducks in a row. Buyers that are willing to deal with a well priced property that requires the sellers to carry back debt are NOT going to be to feel "jerked around" with mysterious offers "on the table" and then disappearing. Their agents HAVE to be dealt with HONESTLY or the listing will be POISON to others...
2) The decision to either list in less than "peak condition" or wait until the place is all "move in ready" ABSOLUTELY has to be a 100% YES OR NO thing, you go "half way" and you BURN BOTH SETS OF BUYERS, burned buyers DO NOT RESCHEDULE during "busy season", they simply find another house to focus on...
3) You interview potential listing agents WELL BEFORE you decide to pick "the one" -- switching agents is not going to help you get this place sold NOW and waiting to August could be disaster...
I honestly thiink your best option is to have a "pow wow" with your broker/agent and lay it on the line -- You are NOT happy about what has happened. You think the place is priced fairly, the offers prove that. Probably the situation of you misunderstanding how much of a shortfall was needed did contribute to the mess. You took out a big pile of dough to pay off the shortfall -- paying that interest / borrowing more is gonna make the mess worse! So will cutting price -- last resort ONLY! You have alienated buyers. Ask for their "best advice and effort" to get the place under contract ASAP. Maybe that means redoing the listing, maybe that means holding a brokers open house, maybe it means better photos, maybe it means a "premium" online listing. Maybe all of the above...
I don't know what to tell you. Short sales are tough and when buyers feel like they are being jerked around they will walk. No buyer is going to wait 3-6 months for a house if they feel they are being dealt with dishonestly. The problem you have now is that none of the three buyers worked out. All three of those buyers can see that the house didn't go under contract. They will question the ethics of your listing agent as a result.
Did your agent do a preliminary net sheet with you at the time of listing? This is a sheet that agents do to give sellers an idea of what they will net when things are said and done. In your case it would give you an idea of how much cash you would have to bring to closing.
Honestly I don't get your agent's strategy. Typically in multiple offer situations, they call for highest and best by a certain day and time. None of this extending and expiring nonsense. There is no better way to irritate a buyer than to do that stuff.
Just to be clear, with my bringing cash to close, this is NOT going to be treated as a short sale with a long close and back and forth with the bank. Even without that circumstance, I don't blame the second two offers for walking. (I feel like the third offer jerked US around.)
No, I did not get a net sheet from my agent before an offer was submitted. I anticipated bringing $16-17K to close, selling under the mortgage balance by approx $10K. When we got the first offer, it would have required $30K to close, and I requested a net sheet for list price at that time, which showed $20K to close. Truthfully, I feel like the agent has screwed around with us as much as he has with the buyers' agents.
Honestly while I applaud the OP's decision to "cover the short" and can understand that it does make sense for some sellers to go this route, the fact is MOST real agents / brokers are NOT familar with the mechanics of such a deal. I was talking to a former colleague about these kind of situations and even though she has MORE experience in generall than I do (she has been at it for like 30 years...) she has done no more than half a dozen such deals. The "net sheet" is crucial and even when acccurate is likely to have so many "negative numbers" on it compared to "regular" deals that it will throw off the usual reviewers -- with no postive proceeds to the seller the compensation is obviusly coming from the pile of money that the seller is bringing to the table and all the more reason for the seller to get fair value from the agent / broker...
I had one of these late last year. I had a title/escrow company do a new sheet at the list price (that we knew was high) so the sellers could do the math when we got an offer. I also wrote in the confidential agent remarks that my clients were prepared to bring cash to the close in order to keep it from being a short sale. They were fortunate to get a good offer quickly and only had to write a check for about $7K to close.
The odd part was when they were going through the process to buy another home, they had to write a letter to the underwriter on why they were willing to write a check to sell the old home. I think they simply wrote that they signed something saying they would pay back the money and so they would.
My unprofessional opinion is that your agent sounds like a jerk and/or idiot. I would replace him as soon as I could contractually, if you can't simply take the house off the market for 6 months or so and start again (the option I would choose if you can stay there that long).
Whatever happened, happened. No, your agent doesn't sound very competent but he did get you three offers, so at least he has some use; and besides you're stuck with him so I suggest just let bygones be bygones and focus on the here and now.
I'd also suggest a description is put in the listing that says something like: Buyer backed out, house back on market - no fault of the seller. This tells other buyers that you got jerked around, and more importantly it tells buyers that your house is nice enough that someone put in a serious offer; buyer's physchology - "I better go check out this house that someone else really liked!"
Furthermore, I'd suggest marketing the house from scratch - broker's tour, open houses, flyers, etc. All the things that got you three offers in the first place.
For three potential buyers to reach the point of making an offer ... and then walking away, one can only conclude that there is a serious 'social problem.' This is most likely the way that your agent is responding to offers, but. possibly with what may seem to be too much drama or complication in the sale. I might try sending a nice, non-combative letter to the other agents and simply ask them for whatever insight they could offer as to what went wrong with the sale. --- Without that, you risk making the same mistake/s over and over ... without really knowing what they are.
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