My mom passed away six months ago. She lived in New York. Neither my sister nor I live there or even very near where she lived.
While we were there making my mom’s final arrangements the first step was to find a local lawyer to handle the estate. Done. He recommended for us a realtor. It didn’t seem like a shady kickback situation, but it might have been better if it had been.
When we met with her she was very enthusiastic. Just a few months earlier he’d sold a house across the street that was part of the same original development as my mom’s so she was familiar with the features. When we walked through she was very encouraging about how quickly she thought it would sell based on the improvements my mom had made. She recommended a price higher than we expected, but insisted that with the siding and roof and flooring etc. we’d get it no problem.
Six months later she’s shown the house twice. She told us she’d held an open house but the neighbor I spoke with said she didn’t see any signs or balloons or an ad in the paper.
We did sign a contract. How do we light a fire under this chick?
If she did indeed lie about having an open house, then I would get another realtor. Could you look online and see if and how many other houses in the area have sold? If things are slow, then she may be doing nothing wrong. Were your neighbors at there home all the time, to see an open house? Perhaps they missed seeing the open house.
I would stop talking to a neighbor and start talking to other real estate professionals to figure out how to get this sold. Your agent is not motivated so why light a fire under her… get someone that is motivated? If a home does not sell it’s likely priced too high for condition/area or its a very small market. I would go to www.zillow.com. Type in home address. Is the home listed for sale? Is it listed at a reasonable price to other similar homes (if any)? Call another broker and find out ‘average days on market’ for that type of home and area. Also ask if your home seems to be priced well. If six months far exceeds that than call your agent’s broker and tell her you want your contract re-assigned or simply cancelled. Seems @ six months you should be close to the contract expiring anyways, no? If so, hire a new agent who sells 30+ homes a year… sounds like this one doesn’t. She should at least be calling you with updates and giving feedback on needed repairs or price strategies. What town is this in? What is square footage, type, condition, # bedroom, and # bathrooms? Good luck.
On the one hand, two open houses in six months doesn’t sound like very many (I don’t know what very many is though), OTOH, from what I’ve heard, it’s not the open house people that buy the house, it’s the appointment people that buy it.
If it were me, I’d call her up, give her another chance, tell her you just can’t afford the taxes anymore (or something like that) and that you want to go back down to your original asking price. Remember, the higher the price, the more commission she gets. Sure, if it doesn’t sell, she gets nothing, but if she’s not putting any work into it, it costs her very little to sit there, idle.
Anyways, after that, what I would say is “John [or whatever your lawyer’s name is] recommended you to me, do I need to call him back and find someone else?” or “John gave me your name, but if you don’t want to do this, I’ll ask him for another reference” That’s what it’ll take to scare her. She likely gets referrals from the lawyer and isn’t going to what to the lawyer to find out his clients aren’t happy. I can virtually guarantee that if you do that, things will start happening as soon as she can get them going. If she doesn’t, call the lawyer and tell him what you told us, but don’t lie or accuse her of anything, just tell him that she doesn’t seem all that interesting in making the sale and see if he has another agent to help…or find your own.
We can’t just get another agent while she’s under contract. We signed a 1 year contract, having neither of us ever sold real estate before. As my sister said, lesson learned that we’ll never get to use.
It didn’t seem like it would be an issue based on how sure she seemed that the house would sell quickly. She told of recent sales on the neighborhood, and hiring at two large businesses nearby.
My sister is executrix of the estate and dealing directly with all these people. In our emails back and forth today she mentioned that she might call the owner of the real estate agency on Monday.