Hi, I live in Southern CA. We put our house on the market 2 months ago and have had 4 people walk through-no offers. We had 1 open house and no one came through. We have been told by the agents of those who did view that our house is priced right. We are in a gated community which is desirable here and the house is in excellent condition and very well presented.

Besides the market here being on the downswing (though all the other houses in our complex are selling or at least getting some viewers). Our agent lives way outside our geographic area-about 1 1/2 hours away-he is a friend of the family we trusted him and he wanted to give us a good rate. We were kind of going off our experience of the housing market over the past 5 years where all the agent had to do was list and do some minor marketing-and 'presto' houses were sold hot off the press. Well, he seemed knowledgable at 1st or at least like he wanted to work but he just doesn't seem to have the answers now that we are looking for. I have been doing research and making suggestions as to what we need to do (agent open house, ads in newspapers, etc) He never suggested those things even after 30 days and kept saying-yep the market just isn't what it used to be. Everything around us is sitting for a long time too! As if we are just supposed to accept that?

We signed a 6 month contract! We all just kind of laughed it off when we signed -like it was just customary-I wish I had done my research then! We have talked to many people who are selling or have sold in the area and it really seems that it is all about who your agent knows-every one of the houses in our high priced gated community has sold in this way or kind of a realtor buddy system-as a crude but lack of a better word description of a small town network (as opposed to someone just getting the house off the MLS.)Is this kind of the way it works for agents? Our buyer commision is at 2.5% which our agent said was what the other houses here went for. Though the other comparable house here just went into Escrow only after upping that to 3.5% and lowering the price by 30K. Some of the other houses that have sold here are very custom and have special things to offer-but I know for a fact that the people who put an offer on the comp house did not even look at ours-ours by the way is much nicer and priced the same. This tells me that the agent chose not to show it-is that safe to assume?

So, my questions-Can I get out of the contract? Am I being reasonable in what I want out of a realtor? Should I have gone with a local contractor? Can I ask them to direct me/transfer me to a local agent within the same company here? I do remember him saying something about being able to cancel if we are not happy with eachother....or something to that effect-The contract is a basic contract and we didn't add anything related to this.

Thanks!

So, you got a reduced price but are paying the norm to a buyer's agent? Therefore, your listing agent is getting piddle compared to another listing agent? Not a good plan.

Yes, I agree you need someone familiar with your area - first mistake.

Perhaps you could contact the agent, agree to reimburse for any marketing he has spent (at your description, that shouldn't cost much) and ask to be released from the contract. You need to speak with the BROKER of the company, not just your agent. The agent may agree to release you, but if not, the broker makes the final decision.

I would recomend maybe a more experienced agent. See here is the deal a good experienced agent will do some research and find out what is makeing some of the homes in your market sell and why some are not. Sometimes its not what the seller wants to hear. But in you own words:

Though the other comparable house here just went into Escrow only after upping that to 3.5% and lowering the price by 30K.

It seems your agent is not doing the proper research.

"He wanted to give us a good rate"wrong answer!

Let me guess discount commission!You are now finding out that wasn't a good plan.

Cali is overpriced an many homes on the market are fearing rapid depreciation so you have many sellers trying to unload at inflated prices so they don't loose there big gains.Or if the refied and sucked out all of there equity they need to sell before the depreciation happens and they are upside down on the mortgage.

It's easy for me too see why he is not eager to sell your house:

1.He is 1 1/2 hours away
2.you focused on getting a low-ball commission
3.of course you want a gazillion open house and multiple classified ads,it's not your money you will be spending!
4.With a reduced rate commission the agent is not making much when it sells anyway,extra advertising etc.will only reduce that commission.


I would offer to up the commission to the buyers agent.

not giving legal advice

I would recomend to take it to a total commission not just the BA. For the SA needs the extra to do some marketing. If all you are doing is uping the BA commission all you are saying is lets rely totally on the MLS system. You need your SA to do some extra as well.

I agree with many of your responses. Though we originally went with this agent because this was a family friend and we felt we could trust him-the lowered commission was a bonus. He has just relocated himself and is trying to get his business going (he had been in RE for several years. I know financially he needs this sale and has the time to do the work. I also think he really wants to keep up the positive word of mouth in our circle of SoCal so he doesn't want to fail. So maybe it is experience. I don't feel that raising his commission will necessarily change things. We can try-but ..... He seems to have an attitude of hiding behind the statistics of home selling over the past years-and we all know that those statistics don't mean a thing if the market has turned around on us-now is the time to pull out all the stops and go for it-in my humble opinion anyway. And we really haven't asked him for much until recently-we let him be the expert-we had one open house and no ads.

I feel that the truer issue (including inexperience or knowledge or laziness) and correct me if I am wrong-is that he just doesn't have a knowledge of the area and local market. He doesn't have any ins or relationships with the other agents here, he can't get the good ad spaces in the papers because other agents 'own' them (I found out many things through my own research here) and he doesn't even have a sister office here to help out locally.

Anyway, I just wonder if that is the primary issue. We had a long talk with him yesterday and let him know all these concerns-++WE++ suggested lowering the price 15K and offering a 5K buyer closing cost incentive. SO that is now in effect and we are giving him 2 more weeks to get some people moving through here-if not we feel it is time to change-that will bring us to 90 days and currently only 4 people have come to view.