Now as for the house being for sale. I grew up around the real estate business, albeit on the west coast, but none the less there were certain things that were done to earn the high dollar commission that a home or piece of property brings. I even spent some time working for Realtors doing some house staging and creating home fliers. When we hired the agent to sell this house (and she was the best of the bunch we’d met) we presented her with a flyer that I had made listing all the new and upgraded amenities we were forced to do, room sizes, etc… All she had to do was apply a sticker with her name, phone number and the MLS number.

We waited and after 2 months I had to call and call to ask for the fliers again to be added to the sign post as many people were driving around in circles looking at the house, but there was no information for them to know more about it. I truly believe fliers are a great tool. The agent had their office secretary redo the fliers and we found that it is their practice to include information that isn’t theirs to include. While the disclosure statement is available to anyone putting up earnest money, it should not be available to any Tom, Dick or Harry driving by as it includes enough information to create identity theft, you know like complete addresses, full names and signatures. We took them all apart and redid them to include only the necessary interest information.

When I asked when the home would be caravaned or toured by local agents, I was told that is not their practice to do that here nor is Open Houses. We were told that if an agent was interested, they would contact us. It has been my experience that a first hand viewing of a property is mandatory to knowing about the property. Pictures and descriptions only go so far. I was told that taking the time to do a home tour conflicts with too many agents “other” jobs. So I ask you, am I expecting too much? They earn the same percentage commission here as in California or New York and everywhere in between, but do a whole lot less to earn it. And I say “THEY”, but I’m finding that while this is apparently the norm for this county and area, it is NOT the rule. We’re thinking we should change companies as there has been no activity generated by them on any level, but apparently we need them to agree they aren’t doing a good job before they will let us out of the 6 month contract so we can list with a company and agent willing to do the whole job.

While they agreed to the cancellation (it took 2 weeks of perseverance to even get them to acknowledge us) and have picked up their sign, they have not removed the listing from the MLS and are not returning calls. I’m going to cal the board of Realtors on Monday as well as the MLS service, but so far no one seems interested in helping.