FSBO Advice

[DKB_SATX]

Originally Posted by Ganaraska

I listed an old hotel that has been empty and out of use for at least 5 years. The agent put on the listing, "this building must be torn down".

Granted, so far I've only sold 3 properties in my life... but I haven't yet allowed my agent to post a listing I haven't proofread first. As dumb as your agent was for including that line in the listing, you were a party to the transaction and have a duty to look out for your own interests.

Personally, I think many agents add little or no value to the transaction. The last time I sold a house, I had a hell of a time with the buyer's agent. The last straw was when he came back 2 days after closing howling about some cans of paint left in the garage (paint in the colors of the house's interior, exterior and trim, mind you.) He seemed to think it was my responsibility to remove them, from 300 miles away. I don't think he at all expected my response of "First, it was YOUR responsibility to either inspect the house before closing or recommend that your clients do so. If your clients are inconvenienced by having some touch-up paint around, since I just paid you $4800, you can do some actual work for a change and go get the damned paint yourself."

I didn't begrudge my own agent her commission, since the house hadn't sold before we had to move, so she was handling things that would have been very inconvenient for me to deal with remotely. The buyer's agent never did much for me but show his buyers the house and make me mad.

[Ganaraska]

Originally Posted by DKB_SATX

Granted, so far I've only sold 3 properties in my life... but I haven't yet allowed my agent to post a listing I haven't proofread first. As dumb as your agent was for including that line in the listing, you were a party to the transaction and have a duty to look out for your own interests.

Personally, I think many agents add little or no value to the transaction. The last time I sold a house, I had a hell of a time with the buyer's agent. The last straw was when he came back 2 days after closing howling about some cans of paint left in the garage (paint in the colors of the house's interior, exterior and trim, mind you.) He seemed to think it was my responsibility to remove them, from 300 miles away. I don't think he at all expected my response of "First, it was YOUR responsibility to either inspect the house before closing or recommend that your clients do so. If your clients are inconvenienced by having some touch-up paint around, since I just paid you $4800, you can do some actual work for a change and go get the damned paint yourself."

I didn't begrudge my own agent her commission, since the house hadn't sold before we had to move, so she was handling things that would have been very inconvenient for me to deal with remotely. The buyer's agent never did much for me but show his buyers the house and make me mad.

I already told you, it wasn't in the listing agreement I signed. The broker made it up himself out of his own head. Then he included it in the listing he published on MLS, in the ads he put in the paper, and in an information handout he prepared to give to potential buyers. I found out about it when I read it in the local newspaper, along with 50,000 other people. By that time the cat was out of the bag. He never asked if he should do it and did not tell me before hand. If I had even suspected he was thinking of such a thing I would have stopped it but by the time I got wind of it, it was too late. Hope that is clear.

The agent yelling about the paint does not surprise me a bit. The only thing surprising is that he waited until it was too late to screw up the deal. I'll bet that wasn't the only little "educational suggestion" he came up with. In other words your house sold IN SPITE of him, NOT because of him.

[Ganaraska]

Originally Posted by markdoane

You put everyone else in your narrow frame of reference. Not everyone has your expertise. Not everyone sees education as a "problem in a nutshell".

And thank you for taking it upon youself to define her job. It's not YOUR job, is it?

Someone needs to help first time buyers, which you are not. A lot of people appreciate the help. You've obviously had some bad experiences with realtors. I'm sure they share your opinion of the interaction.

What planet are you from? When I hire someone it certainly is up to me define her job. If she doesn't do the job properly, it is up to me to correct her. As a professional real estate agent she answers to her client (me) and to the law. She is supposed to represent MY interests as long as what I ask her to do is within the law. It is actually illegal for an agent to side against her client or to take money from the other party without permission.

I'm not even talking about education. I am talking about agents refusing to sell a client the house they want because they (the agent) prefers a different style of house. I am talking about agents refusing to present an offer because if it was their house, they would prefer a higher offer.

The real estate business is not about educating the client. A lot of first time home buyers have been railroaded into buying houses they should never have bought, because it was in the agent's interest not the clients. If you do not believe me just look around at the number of people now in foreclosure and losing their homes because they got suckered into buying way more house than they could afford. This was gravy for the banks and the real estate industry but murder on the poor suckers who trusted them.

[DKB_SATX]

@Ganaraska: By proofread the listing, I mean proofreading the MLS listing before it is posted. I don't know if I have had thorough agents or if it's because I'm a control freak about things like that (I am) but I have read and modified the MLS listings before they were posted. In 2 of the 3 cases there were errors on the proposed listing that concerned me because they were things that would piss me off as a buyer if/when I found that the property wasn't as described in the listing.

The listing AGREEMENT is another document entirely. In Texas it's a standard form with blanks to fill in, not a lot of freeform text and checkboxes like the MLS data for the MLS listing itself.

If my agent changed an MLS listing in any material way from what we had agreed on, I would summarily fire him or her. Whether intentional or accidental, that's malfeasance.

[markdoane]

Originally Posted by Ganaraska

What planet are you from? When I hire someone it certainly is up to me define her job.

Excuse me? I'm from Earth, and it's apparent you are from some different place where you write all the rules and everyone does things your way.

I'm sorry you had such a negative experience, but I don't feel it's my fault, nor do I feel it's the real estate industrie's fault if you are in foreclosure.

Maybe you shouldn't have refinanced every three years and used the equity in your house to fund your vacations and trips to Vegas.

[hampstead38]

Easy, gents. There are about a zillion realtors out there. I'm sure some are great and some are not-so-great. And maybe I'm not a careful reader, but I didn't see where anyone on this thread is in foreclosure or taking routine trips to Vegas. The mortgage meltdown involved a wide range of factors... including gov't intervention into the marketplace. It wasn't just a case of realtors selling people houses they didn't need, or mortgage mills falsifying financial data, or the monetization of sub prime mortgages. It was a systemic failure... and individual homebuyers deserve some of the blame for making old-fashioned poor decisions.

My point is that I'm trying to sell my house without carving out a check for $20k... and I just wanted to know who had been successsful with what FSBO web sites.

[Foiled Again]

Originally Posted by hampstead38

I'm sure there are good realtors. And I'm sure there are people who need the help. What I see, however, is the real estate agent going the way of the travel agent. And I think the same dynamic is at work. At one point, travel agents had access to information that consumers didn't. This changed with the Internet. Now, I can book an extensive trip entirely online, read reviews, consult professional opinions--all for less cost than using a local agent. What's happened in real estate is that the balance of power has shifted. The MLS is the last competitive advantage for most realtors... and most consumers have access via a flat fee listing. Just to clarify, I don't think realtor are any better or worse than any other profession where a week's worth of coursework will get you a license. It's just that they are an increasingly unnecessary profession.

Very good cogent points. We're all watching Blockbusters and Barnes & Noble - going slowly down the drain.

However - we cannot all be experts on all things. Sometimes it is better to save the "learning curve" time and spend the bucks.

Our business "Answer Center" exists because of that idea. A plumber CAN answer all of his own business calls over a cell phone, BUT:

• it is a bit inconvenient when he's one of four guys carrying a 300lb bathtub up a flight of stairs
• it sounds SO wrong when he's lying flat on his back in a musty crawl space.
• when the sewage backs up at 1:00 AM he'll lose sleep that he needs to work effectively the next day. It makes good sense to have US negotiate and make sure the caller will pay extra for "night work" before we wake him up.
• he never gets big jobs as long as he sounds like a "one man/one van" owner
• he loses jobs every time callers go to voice mail instead of having his "secretary" set an appointment.

Einstein not withstanding to the contrary - time has fixed limits. An Assistant can really help your throughput.

Paula

[Ganaraska]

Originally Posted by markdoane

Excuse me? I'm from Earth, and it's apparent you are from some different place where you write all the rules and everyone does things your way.

I'm sorry you had such a negative experience, but I don't feel it's my fault, nor do I feel it's the real estate industrie's fault if you are in foreclosure.

Maybe you shouldn't have refinanced every three years and used the equity in your house to fund your vacations and trips to Vegas.

Definition of the word agent:

• a representative who acts on behalf of other persons or organization
• a businessman who buys or sells for another in exchange for a commission

A real estate agent is supposed to represent the client's interests and do things the client's way.

This is actually rather amusing. I have 2 people here who think I am a fool, one for wanting to tell an agent anything at all, the other for not proof reading every ad and vetting every word out of the agent's mouth.

What I expect is somewhere between the two. I expect the agent to act as an agent, to represent my interests as I would myself. If I have to stand over them and watch every word out of their mouth I might as well do the job myself. If they want to get ideas of their own that go against my interests, then they are worse than useless. I don't see what is so hard to understand.

[Ganaraska]

Originally Posted by hampstead38

Easy, gents. There are about a zillion realtors out there. I'm sure some are great and some are not-so-great. And maybe I'm not a careful reader, but I didn't see where anyone on this thread is in foreclosure or taking routine trips to Vegas. The mortgage meltdown involved a wide range of factors... including gov't intervention into the marketplace. It wasn't just a case of realtors selling people houses they didn't need, or mortgage mills falsifying financial data, or the monetization of sub prime mortgages. It was a systemic failure... and individual homebuyers deserve some of the blame for making old-fashioned poor decisions.

My point is that I'm trying to sell my house without carving out a check for $20k... and I just wanted to know who had been successsful with what FSBO web sites.

If by systemic failure you mean a racket that eventually blew up while a handful of crooks walked away with loaded pockets I'm with you. The real estate agents were only a small part of the racket and they were not the ring leaders. But anybody who knew anything about real estate could see a crash coming. I saw it coming from clear outside the country, 3 years before it happened.

Home buyers deserve a small part of the blame but let's face it, they were sucked in by a well organized racket with all the persuasion of modern advertising behind it, endorsed by top government officials, banks, and the whole financial and real estate industry. When someone gets swindled by a professional con man I put most of the blame on the con man and only a small part on the victim. Some very smart people got conned and some of them still haven't gotten wise.

[Ganaraska]

"I'm sorry you had such a negative experience, but I don't feel it's my fault nor do I feel it's the real estate industry's fault if you are in foreclosure."

I'm not in foreclosure and never have been. The hotel I sold was one I foreclosed on because the owner owed me money and didn't pay it back.

"Maybe you shouldn't have refinanced every 3 years and used the equity in your house to finance your vacations and trips to Vegas"

I know you think that's funny but it proves my point. A lot of people did get in trouble for just such a reason. Do you know why? Because of enablers called banks and mortgage brokers who sold them on using their house as an ATM. Homeowners didn't think up the idea. It was the big banks that made it possible, it was the big banks that sucked billions out of the public in fees and commissions, pawned off the rotten investments on others, then got a trillion dollar bailout from the government when the whole scam blew up in our faces.