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Selling Property / Realtor Expectations
zagdrob
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My wife and I are selling a five acre plot of vacant / buildable land in Tennessee and don't have a lot of experience with the selling portion of real estate.
We signed / submitted our realtor agreement a month ago (August 20th to be exact) and as far as we can tell our listing still isn't up. We can't find it on Zillow / Trulia, or even on our realtor's website. My wife has been contacting our realtor's office for a week trying to get an MLS number, and while the realtor's secretary responded to her last Friday that the realtor would reach out to us this past Monday, we still haven't gotten the information we asked for.
I'm getting pretty frustrated with the realtor - I know things are slow down south, but it seems like a month to get a simple listing up is way too slow and the lack of response is simply unacceptable. The realtor was pretty prompt in her replies before we signed a contract with her, but now we can't get anything back.
Has anyone else had experiences selling property or dealing with a realtor? I wasn't sure if this is typical, not great but not particularly unusual, or simply unacceptable behavior from any realtor.
Right now, the biggest thing (I think) we have going for us is that we were only listing one (of three-five plots we're planning on selling) with her, and we have the option of listing the other plots with another realtor / broker at any point.
We signed / submitted our realtor agreement a month ago (August 20th to be exact) and as far as we can tell our listing still isn't up. We can't find it on Zillow / Trulia, or even on our realtor's website. My wife has been contacting our realtor's office for a week trying to get an MLS number, and while the realtor's secretary responded to her last Friday that the realtor would reach out to us this past Monday, we still haven't gotten the information we asked for.
I'm getting pretty frustrated with the realtor - I know things are slow down south, but it seems like a month to get a simple listing up is way too slow and the lack of response is simply unacceptable. The realtor was pretty prompt in her replies before we signed a contract with her, but now we can't get anything back.
Has anyone else had experiences selling property or dealing with a realtor? I wasn't sure if this is typical, not great but not particularly unusual, or simply unacceptable behavior from any realtor.
Right now, the biggest thing (I think) we have going for us is that we were only listing one (of three-five plots we're planning on selling) with her, and we have the option of listing the other plots with another realtor / broker at any point.
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I'd say a month is all the time I'd give them, too. Make sure if you paid money to list it, you get it back.
It could just be the area that I live in, but a month sounds ludicrous. We just put our house on the market last week, and our realtor had it on every website with an MLS number in less than 48 hours. I find it incredibly strange that she is dragging her feet - she presumably doesn't collect her full fee until the plots sell, right?
Guess my wife and I will be talking about this in just a few minutes.
I figured this was going to be problematic, and I'm glad we only signed the contract for five acres (even if she did decide to list more than that).
I think if someone's going to make thousands of dollars, they can at least do the basics.
Time to go rant to my wife (and for her to rant back).
Wow.
How can you be so bad at your job?
On the plus side, you're sharing the same rant, right? Thats got to count for something.
The realtor was initially great when we were talking about auctioning off the whole farm - it's highly desirable, one of the largest single plots in the area...it would basically have been a once-in-a-decade opportunity for her. They were eager, responsive, etc. The property is fantastic...but it's also an eight hour drive away from where we live so we can't really enjoy it. When we were down there in the spring we met with them, but had such a good time there (and my wife has a lot of sentimental attachment since it's been in her family since the Civil War) that we would sell a few smaller parcels to get ahead financially and keep the bulk of the property.
The realtor and her husband spent about an hour talking to us, while her dad (the owner of the auction / realty company) bumbled around and spent maybe thirty seconds talking with us. They indicated that it was no problem selling smaller plots and they would be happy to work with us to line up a surveyor and get the smaller listings up - but recommended that instead of an auction, we just do a normal listing. Everything was still good...
Well, after that, they stopped being responsive and it took them a month and a half to get a quote from a surveyor which came back as ridiculously expensive. When we asked why, they sent over a crappy hand drawn map that was nothing like what we talked about. Turns out that her dad - who we hadn't even really talked to - drew it out and sent it to the survey company. This was our first indication something was fishy, but I bought a license to Google Earth Pro, mapped out what we were interested in selling and sent the .pdf onto them.
She told us she would send it on...and another month passed with basically nothing. My wife reached out and she told us that this isn't something they normally do (which, is fine if they had just told us up front) and suggested we handle the survey ourselves. I touched base with my cousin who is a surveyor up here in Michigan, and he referred me to a surveyor he's been working with down in Tennessee - I forwarded on the plot we were looking at, and he got a quote back in a matter of hours for a fraction of the price she gave us.
We probably should have dropped the realtor at that point, but we had already been working with her and she was one of the only local realtors. The farm is in the literal boonies - like, in 15 miles from the Cumberland Gap / Wilderness Road that Daniel Boone first blazed - so we were a bit worried about going with someone else and her sabotaging the sale. After that, she sent the contract over, we signed it, it took a month to get the listing up with the wrong plots on Friday (again - I drew out exactly what we were interested in selling through her in Google Earth).
We talked about it over the weekend, and decided that my wife would call her today and tell her to pull the listing. We're both getting good raises in the next few months - she knew hers was coming but my boss told me about it late Friday, and while money will be a bit tighter than we would like until my daughter is out of preschool and into Kindergarten next fall, we can easily afford it and there's no urgency to sell.
TL,DR: Fuck the realtor, they aren't making anything off us. Should have gone with our instincts. Thanks for the advice - it was just the push we needed.
Just...
Wow
realtors can have specialities and their biases
especially since it's vacant rural (I assume) land, they might have felt that it was "not worth their time", or hard to sell, or whatever
when you have an unusual thing to sell you need to go with a specialist, someone with a record of success in that area.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
That's the thing - we did our research and they were very highly recommended as the best in the area when it comes to selling vacant / rural land and buildable lots.
We went through a bunch of references, talked to some people we knew in the area, and only heard good things. Everything, including business, happens painfully slowly down there, so we weren't completely sure if our expectations were just too high.
I'm not sure if it's a case of them trying to take advantage of us 'big city northerners' or if they just didn't think it was worth their time after getting hopes up over the big sale, but either way it really doesn't matter now.
The land isn't going anywhere and its value is only going to go up. We're making enough income to pay the taxes now and looking at some other ways to make more income (cattle / timber) so it's not like we can't sell later with someone else if we decide that's what we want to do.
The past two and a half years of getting this property (long story about wills being changed two days before wife's gma dies leaving everything to random shithead, lawsuits, family strife, etc) have just been an ordeal and...with us pulling the listing today...there's nothing else that we're waiting for. It's really a relief to finally be able to move on and it's just starting to sink in.
That has zero bearing, as you pay a percentage, not a flat fee (generally).
it does if they think that they can get more for the parts then as a lump sum, which might be true if its a nice piece of property. The extra large parcel could price people out of the property where as you might get more people who could afford the parceled property
No up front fee, but we've got a one year exclusivity contract and then a six month carry-over.
There are a few loopholes we can use - we can list a different 5 acre plot with another realtor, and we could probably make a case that they were negligent in their duties that wouldn't be worthwhile for them to fight...but at the moment, we aren't doing anything and don't have any rush.
We did decide that we would just leave the listing up for now and see what happens - if there's a lot of interest, no interest, etc - information that could help inform us if we decide to sell in the future. We aren't planning on selling through her, there's no cost to us, and it doesn't change the terms / timeline of our agreement with her, so we can get more information at no cost or risk to us. And hell, if we get a buyer and decide we want to sell after all, well...we'll make that decision when we get to it.
but they're listening to every word I say
We then got a verbal offer on the house after it was unlisted....
― John Quincy Adams
― John Quincy Adams
― John Quincy Adams
It's important to note, that a realtor can't make anyone look at a house. Clients have to say they want to see it. So, while some houses will sit and go unshown, sometimes there is little you can do about it.
The best you can do is put up nice pictures and have it at a good price. Some people need to sell but refuse to price to sell, etc.
but they're listening to every word I say
And then they pay property tax over and over. Where I am property tax on non residence can get up to 5.5k.
That means if your property sits on the market for a year, you could've dropped it by 5k and made a profit on it. Prospective/sunk costs can be a bitch if you don't understand them.