That's interesting and very different from this area, where the lender commits to the client, not the property.

Of course, we have a contingency for appraisal, which can be waived by the buyer (but the appraisal will still be done; it's just that if the property doesn't appraise, the buyer will pay the difference as the lender will not finance it).

Still, you're saying the lenders will not even do a full approval on the buyer without knowing the property? That is tough on the sellers!

Sorry - I guess I didn't say that very well.

Up here the lender will commit to the buyer – but only after they have satisfied themselves that the investment is sound.

That’s exactly what I think the problem may be. Not all buyers can fund the difference. Young families, move-up buyers with limited cash coming in may not be able to bridge the gap. We see lots of buyers with good incomes but minimal (sometimes no) cash.

............. Dave

Just read about this 7 streak losing effort...what a fiasco.

Although I do hope it sells..its never as easy as putting a sign in the lawn.

Since you now seem to have a preinspection done, relist and start from scratch. Every home seller I deal with gets pre-inspected upfront due to the collection of stories like this I have in my presentation.

As far as pre-qualified goes...that can change with the wind. You want 2-3 days max for financing and a good chunk upfront for deposit. Make sure the bank's value of your home is within 10% of yours.

Thanks for the input. Are you suggesting we switch to another agent and re-list? We had the inspection done within the first few weeks of listing and after the first deal fell through. Every buyer since then has used the inspection report and not opted to do their own.

As for the bank's value of the home we had it appraised about a year and a half ago for the purpose of a line of credit to finance our new construction. While I know prices have gone up since then and we have made further improvements to the house since that time, we are still within 10% of that appraisal.

Also, what are the implications of going with a new agent. When we listed our agent told us that we could get out of the deal at any time if we were not happy. However, two questions come to mind -- what happens to the deals that have failed but not totally. In the cases of two offers the buyers say that if they can get their financial matters straightened out they will back with unconditional offers. One of them has even gone so far as not to have signed off the mutual release and taken his deposit back even after over a month has passed. Given the amount of time I am not sure he will be able to do it but I still wonder. Also, what is the deal with the holdover period? Even though she lets us out of the deal, is it normal to insist this continues?

Whoa, it seems like not much was explained to you upon the signing of the agreement. Ethically speaking, your agent owes you 4 things: competence, obedience, good faith and disclosure and accurate accounting.

Your best bet is talk to the broker and mention "specific performance" and how (it seems) that you were not properly trained for this event.

No agent can control who other agents show your home to, or weather those people are able to buy your home.

You have been exposed to the open market and received a number of offers from sincere buyers. In Ontario as a matter of standard practice, finance conditions are not written with escape clauses.

It sounds like your agent has done a decent job so far. What could another agent have done differently ?


You can’t be half pregnant ....... You either have a deal or you don’t – as per the language in your agreement - after the conditional period, if the conditions are not satisfied – the agreement collapses and the buyer’s deposit is returned – without interest or deduction. The mutual release is simply the 2 parties to the contract (buyer & seller) giving the broker the authority take the moneys from the trust account. It has no bearing on “keeping the deal alive”.


The hold over clause will only apply if you don’t relist your home with a realtor at the END of this listing.

Also ... "Specific Performance" is asking the courts to force someone to fulfill their contractual obligations – but if the offers don’t firm up you have no contract - I don’t see how it has any relevance to this discussion.

Hope this helps ........ Dave

I agree with everything you have said - I am not sure if the agent could have done more on any of these deals. Also, on the mutual release, we have also been operating under the assumption that it does not matter because we accepted another offer while the other person's unsigned release and deposit were still sitting there. I guess I wonder why someone would leave the deposit there. In any case we consider the deal dead but you never know. On the specific performance issue I also agree and was puzzled that it was brought up because I wondered performance of what? Once they say they do not have financing, then there is no deal.

The one thing I was interested in though is that the holdover period does die with the end of the listing. We were clearly told that we could back out at any time and to my mind cancelling the agreement means cancelling the whole agreement - holdover clause and all. If this could not be done then why would any other agent want to take our listing -- this is what concerned me.

Anyway I am not sure what I want to do with all this. Clearly, the fact that the house has been listed for 2 months and has not sold is of concern as it may appear stale to new entrants into the market. If they knew the whole story they would know that it is not a "problem property".

Thanks for the clarification, Dave. We run into the issue regarding appraisals here all the time and it is a big problem for first time home buyers who do not have enough cash.

For those who have enough cash to make a substantial downpayment, then the appraisal is not usually an issue, but for those who want to use 100% financing or only 5% down, they are typically out of luck as many offers do strike the appraisal contingency, which these buyers are not in a position to do (unless they are feeling bold!)

So, Unhappy, do you know if the appraisal has been an issue for any of these buyers? I think you said the issue for a couple of buyers was specific to the buyers (which sounds as if they possibly were not qualified to buy the house in the first place), but what of the others? Did the house not appraise at your selling price?

I think the appraisal value is actually very close to the selling price on the house and no one has brought it up as an issue. The last two deals with the odd circumstances involve someone in the midst of a divorce who is not yet able to officially prove to her bank the amount of money she will take from the sale of her house. We have been told that even though her house sold for more than twice the price of ours in another market, without some confirmation from the lawyers involved in the divorce the bank will not approve financing. The other case involved a very young person with a 30% downpayment but no credit history - the bank was willing to give him a mortgage but at almost twice the going rate. The other two circumstances were equally unique.

If the appraised value had been an issue would the buyers not have raised it and tried to have the price adjusted?

Yes, I think you should have heard (or your agent should have found out)if the appraisal was an issue in your case. With that said, it seems to me (and bear in mind, this is just my perspective, based on how things are in my market, so take it with a grain of salt), that no one has yet delivered to you an offer from a qualified buyer, which is a reflection, quite frankly, on the buyers' agents as well as the listing agent.

I would consider neither of those two people you described above as qualified to buy your house and neither should their agents.

I realize markets are different, so the ways real estate agents work in your market may be different, but at the end of the day, a good agent should not be wasting time writing offers for people who are not qualified to buy a home.
And they should know that before they put them in their car.

If they want to ride around showing them neighborhoods and houses -- and have that kind of time on their hands -- that's their decision, but they should know better than to write offers their clients cannot fulfill.

As a buyer's agent, I would not have been out showing houses, much less writing offers, on behalf of the first client, who was not even in a position to get a mortgage right now, it appears, nor would have I have been showing houses to the second person, who despite having a down payment, was not able to get a mortgage at rates acceptable to him. All of these factors should have been discovered by the buyers' agents prior to ever showing them anything.

Further, as a listing agent, I never consider an offer until I have had a long discussion with the lender qualifying the buyer. Now, again, I realize not all markets are the same, but honestly, I would expect a listing agent, regardless of the market, to do some due diligence in determining whether or not the offer is coming from someone who has the means to fulfill the contract. To me, an offer from someone who is not qualified to buy your house is not an offer. It's just a waste of time.

While it appears you have certainly had your share of unique experiences, at the end of the day, they all share one thing in common: all of the offers came from people not qualified to make an offer in the first place. If your house inspects well, is well priced and *should* be selling, then your house is not the issue.

p.s. I realize I should have worded something differently -- as a listing agent, I would have done some due diligence before advising my client, not before considering an offer. It would not be the listing agent's offer to consider, of course...my fingers were going a little faster than my mind!

Is your listing agent doing any targeted marketing of your home? If so, perhaps that is not quite hitting the right target.

On average, in our market, anyway, people typically move up 1.5x the value of their existing home (from $400,000, for example, to $600,000). And, typically, statistically speaking, people who call on your house from a sign cannot afford it; people who call from an ad can afford more. It may be the LA's marketing plan needs a little tweaking in order to assure you are getting truly qualified prospects.

As far as I can tell the listing agent has no plan and that is what we are a little frustrated with. What she seemed to be relying on was calls based on the sign. We live on a crescent and not a main street so that surprises me. We went with her firm because they apparently had contracts for relocations for several large employers in our area. We have not seen any business from this at all. The explanation we have received is that the transfers which should have happened in March are not happening until April. In all, of all the people who have seen the house, her group has only brought us two people.

What should we realistically expect in terms of a marketing plan? All that we have seen is an ad for the house in a real estate paper for the province and the MLS listing. I have not seen it in the newspaper ads or anywhere else. When we ask what she is doing she says there is a lot going on behind the scenes that we do not see. However, we have to prompt her to follow up with other agents such as the offer that fell through last week to see where they stand (we have done this because they said they were trying to sort out the issue with the lawyers and would come back with an unconditional offer once it was sorted). We are at the point now that if we do not see any positive effort on her part over the next week, we will have to find another agent. My husband is also at the point of not believing what she tells us and I don't think that is a good situation.

Some agents take a more passive approach than others; by passive, I mean putting a listing in MLS, putting up a yard sign and running an ad in the paper. Okay, so how is this different than what one could do themselves??? Clients rely on agents to do what they cannot do themselves!

Ads and signs typically account for less than 10% of sales. Open houses often offer a plethora of opportunities for agents to pick up new clients, but don't sell houses more than 10-15% of the time (these are regional figures, but I suspect they apply somewhat uniformly).

Broker opens work extremely well for me because I want to expose my listings to agents who have qualified buyer clients and I want multiple contracts coming in on my listing for my seller's sake. I find that if I do a broker's open house, I have a contract before I have a chance to do a public open.

I do "frequent flyers" (not necessarily available in your area, but it's an idea) -- a relatively low cost way of sending a flyer out about YOUR house to every real estate agent in the area. The agent provides a flyer, the advertising company distributes it to each agent. This is usually done in correlation with a broker's open.

I would do postcards to targeted neighborhoods where I think there is a possibility of someone "moving up" to the neighborhood where I have a listing. In other words, if your house would be suitable for someone who is perhaps starting a family and needs a little more room or wants an established neighborhood, I would target families in smaller, started homes...whatever the demographics suggest. (I say I "would do" because in this market, I have not had a listing last long enough to get a postcard designed and in the mail before the listing went under contract, but if things start to slow a little, I would definitely do direct mail).

Phone calls, emails or faxes to every agent in town describing your home is a good start! Phone calls to appropriate neighborhoods is also effective (and a good way for an agent to pick up a new listing, perhaps).

It is entirely possible there is a lot going on about which you are not aware - fine - BUT ask her to sit down with you and outline in great detail what exactly she IS doing to generate interest. Perhaps she is waiting for the transfers to happen, but for what it's worth, my opinion is you should never "wait" for anything to happen. You MAKE it happen.

At the very least, have her sit down in person with you and tell you exactly what she is doing, what she HAS done and she plans to do.

Don't accept "behind the scenes" as an answer. That's like my scheduling an appointment for mid-day because I don't like getting up in the morning, but telling the client I have a morning appointment! (Yeah, with the pillow!) It's very easy to create a flurry of activity when, in fact, it may not be activity which is effective.

Next offer you get, counter it with the clause that the lender is authorized to release any and all information requested by you or your agent. Then you will find out the "Rest of the Story"