HAH! We chose not to use my brother-in-law as our real estate agent last summer when we changed houses because frankly he isn’t very good at it and this was a very big deal to us, too (that’s a WHOLE lot of money in this transaction, and we couldn’t take a chance on someone incompetent, we felt), and he hasn’t spoken to us in (counts) 12 months now. The prick. He’s basically caused a rift in our family because of his greed and ego.
The realtor we chose to go with was wonderfully competent and worked her ass off for us; we were completely satisfied with the results of selling and buying with her. Well, the people who bought our house were assholes, but that wasn’t her fault.
Realtors work weekends, period. Don’t go into this line of work if you aren’t free weekends. Our realtor would have shown us a house at three in the morning if that’s when it worked out - she told us frequently to call her at any time of the day and night, and she meant it. While she was selling our house and we were buying the next one, she was On The Job, period.
Very common. For what it’s worth, we bought my house about a year and a half ago and are currently buying a house in Vegas. The agents FALL ALL OVER THEMSELVES to show you properties. Seriously, huge piles of properties, at a moment’s notice if that’s what you want. All around your schedule. That’s how it should be, since you’re spending a buttload of money.
Yikes! IMO you need to sit down with BIL pronto and tell him that you need him to be more available or you’re going to find a new realtor. When I bought my house last year, my realtor (Fabulous! In fact, I recommended her to Renee, who also loved her.) was pretty much available 24-7. In this market, you should have no trouble finding someone who is able to meet your needs.
Did you sign a brokers buyers agreement? I just bought a house last month in California and our broker was available on a half an hours notice. He had guidelines of what to look for and we didn’t go through MLS listings that much on our own. He explained to us all the tools he had available to him to search that we didn’t have and he used them. He went to broker caravans and let us know if there was something we should see. He did all the work in looking and weeding out potential houses. If I wanted to see something I would generally be able to see it that day provided it was on lockbox and basically there was never a time that he couldnt show us something around our schedule. He gave us his schedule and let us know for example if he was holding a house open that he could meet us before or after. Find someone who is local to the area you are buying and they will be in tune with the other agents and what is potentially on the market in the future. In my neighborhood you are not allowed to put up for sale signs so you have to rely on an agent to find out whats for sale or use the internet. So fire him if you signed an agreement or ditch him if you didn’t.
A Realtor[sup]TM[/sup] is a licensed real estate sales agent or broker who belongs to the National Association of Realtors. The word is pronounced with two syllables, REAL-tor; not three, REAL-a-tor. It is a trademarked name that cannot be legally used by a non-member.
Realtors must be agents, but not all agents are Realtors; it is entirely a voluntary association. Most agents belong because the benefits – access to Multiple Listing Services and others – are considerable for the dues fees. Agents that limit their practice to, say, just one condo development or building project might not see the use of joining, and get by without.
I skimmed past some replies - being lazy. My realtor chatted with us about what we were looking for. He sent links to listings that generally fit those requirements. We chose which ones we wanted to go see. He came by and took us in his car to the properties. He worked with us around our schedules. I never once looked at any listings on my own.
We checked probably half a dozen properties before finding the one we really liked and bought it.
We’ve scheduled a meeting with BIL the Agent and thanks to the information y’all have provided, my Lady and I will be well equipped to present our case intelligently, clearly and forcefully.
Thanks to the valuable info gathered here and elsewhere, we were able to have a friendly, business-like chat with BIL wherein we clearly and confidently expressed our concerns about the past and desires for the immediate future.
Our goal was not to threaten him but to let him know we weren’t happy and give him a chance to improve his performance. He’s bright enough to read between the lines and we’re sure he got the message.
We also made some adjustments on our end, such as making ourselves available two evenings a week in addition the one day on the weekend.
We don’t have a fixed deadline, per se, but we have checklist and for the moment things are satisfactory.
Thanks again to all who helped educate us and offered encouragement and support. (Especially Musicat!)
Here in Sacramento there’s also an online source where you can look at MLS listings yourself: http://www.metrolistmls.com/ . I see it includes at least some Bay Area listings; you might check to see whether there’s a Bay Area-specific version.
Two years ago I purchased a second home as an investment when it was truly a buyer’s market.
Our agents we my Grandson’s mother and step father. They make a good living at selling real estate so we assumed they were good. And they were.
We did not have to search for houses to look at. Several times a week they would e-mail us the listings of houses that they thought we would like. My wife and I would go over them and descide which houses we were interested in. We would then call them and set a date to look at some houses. Mostly evenings but also on the weekends. If a house we showed some interest in lowered its price they would call us to keep us posted. They took the time to figure out what we really hoped to get.
I also printed the listings that they sent us. I made notes on them even the ones we did not look at. Notes like: price too high, wrong neighbor hood, etc. If we looked at the house the notes might read: run, bad roof, small yard, trafic noise, not nice house, or no furnace.
We looked at little house that was really cute, but no heat. The furnace had been removed. After several months of coming up short on everything we looked at my wife and I were going over the lists of houses to see if we wanted to revisit any. We kept coming back to the little house at $305,000, but that was just too much with no furnace. The next day the price dropped to $280,000. My wife called me and wanted to look at the house again, we did and asked Dan and Jamie to put in a offer at $250,000. It was acpted and Dan and Jamie helped us get the bank to put in a new forced air furnace at their cost.
While working with us they were also working with other customers so there were times when we had to wait. The responces that we got from them led us to believe that they treated all their customers like they were treating us.
4 showwings in 3 months? But you also need to be looking in the evenings also, and I am glad you are making that adjustment. good luck in your hunt.
When we were looking for a house, our real estate agent took us to about 35 different homes and finally started to see what made us go “wow” and what made us go “yawn”.
By about home 36 she knew exactly what we were looking for; style, price range, location and amenities. The next five homes were all “hits” for us.
However, the home we finally selected wasn’t even open for viewing for two days - but she gave us a print out and said, “I think this is what you are looking for.”
She nailed it. We said if the house looked half as good as it did on paper, we’d take it. It did, we did, and moved in 6 months later (it was under construction.)
The point is - any good real estate agent should know, after a certain amount of time, exactly what you are looking for and find places that match what you want. I don’t understand why your agent/BIL hasn’t come to you with a short list of homes to view every weekend. How hard can it be?
Three bedrooms: check
Two baths: check
Contemporary design: check
Price range: check
Neighborhood: check
Fireplace and big back yard: check
See what I am getting at?
At least, that is how our agent went about it.
I too kept old listings even if they were a “no” because often it would help me figure out room sizes as well. If I was looking at a new listing and the house had room sizes - I could compare it with one I’d already seen and be like - oh, it’s bigger than the living room in this house, or smaller than the kitchen in this house - I’m better at relational measurements than just feet and inches.
If the house search is this important to you, why don’t you and your “Lady” take a day off from work and have your BIL fill one whole day with showings at various houses. You should be able to fit in about 15 houses to see in the whole day. Your BIL realtor should be able to accomplish this. This is how most people that are moving into a new city conduct house hunting. Get it all done in a day or two. 3 of the 5 houses that I have purchased were done in this manner.
Yes, but the credit market has also collapsed (well, some), so financing a $150,000 house may be just as hard today as financing a $250,000 house was last year.
Maybe you are able to keep track of what you saw, but, IMHO, but many searchers get confused if they see more than 4 in a day. Perhaps spending more time looking at pictures and data might eliminate the obvious "no"s before the actual legwork. There are so many tools online, both for the public and agents, that you can accomplish more in front of a computer than you used to.
