Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Based on your timeline, 8 days on the market and only 2 offers, I think it's fair to say you got top dollar in the current market. If you wait you run the risk of the 2 birds in hand flying away. You can only stall people for so long.
You got 2 quick offers that were similar. If you waited the market may have gone up and you may have found a buyer willing to pay more. However, it could have also been that those were your best 2 offers. There is no gaurantee you do better by waiting, and it is a fact that if your home sits on the market people think something is wrong. The showings slow down, and the offers get less competetive. I think you did well. Don't second guess yourself. Facts indicate you got the best possible offer you were going to get at this time.
I think the agent gave you excellent advice based on timelines and comments in your post. You may not have liked your agents personality or communication style, but it appears on the evidence presented they did the job you hired them for very well. They marketed the home and got multiple offers, and advised you, and helped you get to closing. The rest is just icing. Congratulations on the sale!
If I listened to agent's excellent advice I would've gone with the FHA loan since that's the one my agent was pushing. They never told me the pro's and con's of each offer. Could I have asked, yes but IMO this agent with "25+ years of experience", as they brought up to me a lot of times, could've done that so I would have all the data in front of me to decide. Of course they should also state which one they felt would best to take and the reasons. Like I said after I watched a few hours of Youtube videos and some email replies from some agent's I know in my state it seemed like the consensus was take the conventional loan over FHA or VA loans since the conventional loan tends to be "cleaner" versus the other two. FHA appraisals are a lot more stringent and will nit pick things that need to get fixed over a conventional appraisal. Also if the FHA appraisal comes in low then that appraisal for the home is public for 3 months for any future FHA offers, gee "25+ years of experience" that little tidbit would've been nice to know. When I told my agent what I researched and why we should start focusing our efforts with the conventional loan their response was, "I've got 25+ years of experience but since you're my client I'll do what you would like". When I got the two offers I said why don't we counter the conventional loan to let them know that offer isn't going to buy this house. They declined because they said the FHA loan was a solid offer since they were willing to add $8,000 to the appraisal if it didn't appraise at the offer they presented which the conventional loan didn't have. But once I told them to counter the conventional loan guess what, they upped their offer and added the same clause regarding the appraisal to add more money.
My point is why did *I* have to be the one to educate myself about these Real Estate topics ( Along with others during this whole process )? Shouldn't that education be coming from my Agent to me? Where is the work for the commission if I educate myself and my agent just becomes a proxy?
Reading this I can understand why you would doubt the efficacy of your agent. In fact, you've provided a lot more detail that wasn't in this post before (I don't really all the discussion threads and wasn't aware of a lot of this). There's a lot you've said here that understandably is giving you pause.
The comps you're mentioning seem to have sold for a lot less than your house. So, I'm just curious if there were better ones. Not sure why your agent said they couldn't find the comps you mentioned though and their refusal to show them to you on their system seems odd.
Talking about comps in a vacuum without local knowledge and without seeing all of the properties in question is really a meaningless conversation though.
Please let us know how that turns out.
It's human nature. If you observe a "rule" and you spot an exception to that "rule" you start to have questions about why that example is an exception. Working with buyers I can't tell you how many times I've gotten the question "why is that house still on the market?" If I had a dime for every time, I could retire.
Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. I think despite your attorney telling you that you have other options you got good advice here. Why spend the time and expense with the attorney to get all of this done and moving all the stuff out, etc. if you're not 100% sure it's a done deal yet? I probably would have given you the same advice . . . wait until you are 99% sure this is closing before you put all this effort in.
No idea why your agent wants you to be local for the final walk thru and even to stay a day after that though. Do you ever ask them the reasoning behind some of this advice?
That's really poor. In this day and age, there's really no reason not to have good photos on a listing. Even an amateur photographer can get pretty good results with an iPhone these days. All of my listings get professional level photography though but I don't deal with price points low enough where I wouldn't be able to budget for that. The market I work in just has values high enough where I don't have to even think about that.
Agents are definitely not all created equal. I'm always surprised how many people not only hire but stick with poor performing agents. Your agent has given you what seems like a mix of good and questionable advice. It doesn't seem like anything that's worth torpedoing your sale over though. As Brandon said and I tried to convey in my other post, the evidence points towards that you've achieved the highest sale price.
Does your friend work in this area as well? If so, why didn't you hire them? If not, I'm wondering where they go that information from. The reason I mention it is that there's a lot of misinformation out there especially on websites like Zillow. For some reason, I know I have about 4 different profiles on Zillow. Depending on which one you're looking at it might appear I have zero sales or a lot of sales. Their whole site is kind of messed up after they converted to an IDX feed.
It's easy to second guess especially when your agent gives you reason to do so. I would say "stay the course." While you've definitely made the case that your agent could have done better, there doesn't seem to be anything you've said that would indicate you could significantly improve on the sale price.
All BTW this wasn't my attorney, this is the attorney for the realtor's office that handles the settlement documents. Even if the deal fell through the house can still go back on the market with no furniture. Yes having furniture does help but there is no law saying a home can't be listed without furniture. The move was going to happen regardless. And my agent knew that. I asked why we need to be in town till after the buyer's closing date and my agent said in case I need to take care of anything they find during the walkthrough. Again *I* went to Youtube to research this and discovered either I can credit them back depending on the request OR just get it done through my agent who will oversee the work. I went back to my agent and told them this and they said yes you can do that....
I asked my agent about the listing pics and they never answered my the question.
The side advice I was getting from other agents I knew work in different states and not the state where the home was being sold unfortunately.
Based on all my self research I've had to do during the process I'd say that alone is enough to fire this agent, seriously if I knew I'd be doing this much research on selling a home I would've just done more and sold it myself. 100% guaranteed my listing pics would've been better that this Agent's.
All BTW this wasn't my attorney, this is the attorney for the realtor's office that handles the settlement documents. Even if the deal fell through the house can still go back on the market with no furniture. Yes having furniture does help but there is no law saying a home can't be listed without furniture. The move was going to happen regardless. And my agent knew that. I asked why we need to be in town till after the buyer's closing date and my agent said in case I need to take care of anything they find during the walkthrough. Again *I* went to Youtube to research this and discovered either I can credit them back depending on the request OR just get it done through my agent who will oversee the work. I went back to my agent and told them this and they said yes you can do that....
I asked my agent about the listing pics and they never answered my the question.
The side advice I was getting from other agents I knew work in different states and not the state where the home was being sold unfortunately.
Based on all my self research I've had to do during the process I'd say that alone is enough to fire this agent, seriously if I knew I'd be doing this much research on selling a home I would've just done more and sold it myself. 100% guaranteed my listing pics would've been better that this Agent's.
I don't think anyone here is arguing that your agent did a fantastic job. Personally, the only thing I'm trying to say is that I don't think you could have achieved a significantly different outcome with a different agent. Clearly, you can take some credit for that with your efforts to clean up various messes made by your agent. Clearly, they've been making efforts all along to avoid doing work and have been trying to put it on your shoulders instead.
There's definitely no law against selling an unfurnished house. Typically, unfurnished houses sell for less and take more time to sell though. The only time I encourage my clients to sell their house empty is when . . .
A) their furniture looks so bad it would look better empty and/or
B) they don't want to spend the thousands/month it would cost to fully stage the house with furniture
Luckily, 99.9% of my clients have at least passable furniture which can be made to look better with accessories.
- Thursday April 15, my agent showed the home to two potential buyers
- Friday April 16, the home officially listed (appointment only). Two set of potential buyers saw the home.
- Saturday April 17, three appointments
- Sunday April 18, two appointments
- Monday April 19 we received two offers:
- $15,000 over asking FHA load
- $10,000 over asking Conventional load
- two appointments
- Agent advised me to take the FHA offer
- I asked should we wait another week to see what other offers come in? The Agent told me if we do
that people might wonder why we haven't gone into escrow yet and people will wonder why the home is
"sitting" which she says will be viewed as a negative.
- Tuesday April 20, one appointment
- Wednesday April 21, two appointment
- Thursday April 22, one appointment.
- Friday April 23, I went into contract with the Conventional loan offer after they matched the FHA offer. This is after much back and forth with my agent to explain some things on the purchase offer from the FHA loan after which I was still confused and she couldn't explain anymore. So I reached out to some of my colleagues who are agents and I watched a lot of Youtube videos to educate myself and realized the FHA loan carries more risk then the conventional one, one of which if the home appraisers lower then the sale price that will be public with the home for 3 months with all other FHA offers.
Once we went into contract I still asked my agent to continue to show the home but we didn't really get anymore appointments to view the home after that.
I don't have too much real estate knowledge so it was really frustrating having to rely on my agent which wasn't getting my anywhere.
The full story here is that I am helping my mother with the sale of this home since my dad passed away in March and she decided to move back with us in another state. So since March I have been dealing with everything involved with settling my dad's affairs (letting agencies know about his death, submitting paperwork to companies so my mother is taken care of financially, arranging for the transport of their vehicle, plane tickets when to fly myself and my mother back. etc etc). I have my own family that I am responsible for along with work during all this. So it's been quite a challenge to say the least and I do feel bad now that I wasn't able to get top dollar for my mother's home.
What's the price point of the home? If it's $100k, I would be upset. If it's $1m, not so much.
Well from the get go I brought 4 comps within a few blocks of my mother's home (they closed 1-2 months prior to our listing) to my agent and asked them why they didn't appear on their comp list. They stated maybe it hadn't recorded yet, but I pointed out these all closed 1-2 months ago....crickets. About a week later I asked if they see those comps on whatever database they use and they said no.
Based on those comps and not my agents comps I said let's list for $485,000 instead of $475,000 like my agent suggested, they agreed with my price. Those 4 comps sold for $390, $390, $410, $420. That was the first red flag for me, it was the first of many "I" sentences where I did research and leg work to come to a decision.
I have several comps I'm monitoring that listed within a few weeks of ours to see what price they sell at and that'll basically prove my theory or not.
I still don't agree that having the house on the market two weeks before deciding on offers leaves an impression that something is wrong with the house but maybe that's just me.
As far as carrying cost there is no mortgage on the house so carrying cost would be electricity and water if it went back on the market, and I'd only have those on so people can see things working in the home. 2 or more months of those carrying cost to potentially get $20,000-$30,000 more then today is a no brainer.
Aside from these things I asked my agent when would be the earliest we can sign papers so I can book my flights to and from there along with scheduling a transport to pick up my mother's vehicle and the agent said we need to wait for the appraisal inspection to complete and get the report. I saw one Youtube video about the seller's settlement documents that can be signed before the closing date so I asked my agent who was handling that and they referred me to the attorney that will be handling our close. I called that attorney and they said as the seller we can sign a week or so after we accept the offer and we don't need to wait for the appraisal inspection to be complete. The attorney also told me they told that to my agent as well. The attorney also told me we don't need to be in town for the buyers walk-thru & closing date becaus anything at that point can be handled remotely, whereas my agent told me we should still plan to be in town 1 day after the closing in case there are any issues during the walk thru. There are quite a few of these "Hmmmm, really?" situations with this agent hence why I started this thread . Oh yeah the listing itself I was shocked, 90% of the pics were overexposed because of the strong sunlight coming thru the rooms, two photos were upside down, some were not focused and one photo has someone in it!
This experience has left me the more wiser though, I now know what to expect from a competent real estate agent. I just don't feel this agent earned their commission, instead I feel like I should get it based on all the self-education and outside advice I had to get to help me with my decisions.
BTW one agent friend of mine stated this agent hasn't sold anything in the last 12 months and this area is supposedly a "hot market"
I guess I'm trying to stay positive in that we got our target price range for the home, but knowing there could've been potentially more if marketed correctly is frustrating.
I can't read all your details but just FYI, the paragraph is your friend.
If the comps are selling for $390-$420, why are you listing at $485?
My agent picked $375,000 based on the average price of the comps they pulled up. But like I stated there were 4 comps which sold higher and within a few homes of my home that wasn't part of the equation to compute the average. IMO incomplete data...why? Well my agent couldn't explain why those comps I found they didn't see. To me Comps on the same street or around the corner are better then ones a mile or two away. I mean everyone should agree with me on that right?
Were they apples to apples (can't compare 1 story to 2 story for example for comps) and closed within the last 6 months? Were they the same school district, etc? I don't know, just giving you some possible solutions since it matters to you. Trying to help. Your agent may not have done a CMA, but there is simply not enough info to judge.
I don't think anyone here is arguing that your agent did a fantastic job. Personally, the only thing I'm trying to say is that I don't think you could have achieved a significantly different outcome with a different agent. Clearly, you can take some credit for that with your efforts to clean up various messes made by your agent. Clearly, they've been making efforts all along to avoid doing work and have been trying to put it on your shoulders instead.
There's definitely no law against selling an unfurnished house. Typically, unfurnished houses sell for less and take more time to sell though. The only time I encourage my clients to sell their house empty is when . . .
A) their furniture looks so bad it would look better empty and/or
B) they don't want to spend the thousands/month it would cost to fully stage the house with furniture
Luckily, 99.9% of my clients have at least passable furniture which can be made to look better with accessories.
Yes, that's what I'm getting at. I can't say the agent did a good or bad job. I can say the agent didn't meet the clients expectations for advisement and communication but that's about it. I don't see where the outcome would be significantly different either way, as you stated, but I can see the agent did the necessary advisement and job performance required to get the results. Possibly the minimum necessary, but better than blowing the deal or simply doing it wrong or not at all.
If comps were 390-420 and you listed at 385 the sharks would have been circling. You'd have been inundated with showings and offers. Based on the lack of showings and only 2 offers I don't believe the 390-420 comps are an accurate price range for your home. I'd say 375-400k would be more like it. Anyway, you're just stressing yourself out. It's closing soon. Sign the docs and move on. From what you've posted I believe the end result is good for you. Congratulations on the sale and I wish you the best in your next move. You also gained an important learning experience. With your next agent, hire someone that will meet your education and communication expectations.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
