Why Dumping a Bad real Estate Agent May be a Good Idea

I recently received this comment on my post titled Is It Fair to Dump My Real Estate Agent?:

Just a quick follow up from my comment on 7/29 at 12:51.

My grandmother dumped her realtor. He was a jerk about it, telling her how he had put so much work into the listing during the 1.5 YEARS that he had control of it. Two weeks later after changing to a new real estate agent, she had two offers--one of them for full price, in cash.

We haven't decided what to do yet with our agent, but the results here seem to indicate that a good agent can make a HUGE difference versus a not-so-good one. Hmmmm.

Comments

[Tim]

We sold our house in a very slow market because we also had a good agent. My criteria when picking an agent was 1) a top performer 2) someone I liked and could work with 3) someone is a full-time agent, no part-timers for me 4) someone that has been an agent for at least 10 years.

[MasterPo]

Full commission agents are slime!

When I had to sell my mothers house we used a Remaxx agency. The commission would have been around $30k. The agent totally screwed everything up. She broke all the rules I had ever read about the agent/seller relationship. She was soooo much more on the side of the buyer and not us who was paying her! We didn't make a sale with her.

After that fiasco we relisted with Assist To Sell and with in no time had a better offer and closed smoothly.

I'll NEVER use a full-price realtor again!!

[dogatemyfinances]

I think you owe your current agent a chance to keep your business, especially since you know what you need from her (more proactive, aggressive negotiating).

[Paul]

I have a humerous story which I will summarize quickly here. Once I had to dump my realtor when he got arrested for bank robbery. Turns out he had a gambling problem, and owed a ton to loan sharks. I managed to sell the house 1 month later with the new realtor, so it worked out ok.

[Paul]

I used a broker in San Francisco, CA a few months ago I used her services for a commercial real estate deal. I was uneasy with how she conducted business and would not personally recommend her to anyone but the choice is yours. It seems with the economy everyone is pulling a fast one. I delt with another broker in Sonoma County for another property I had my invstors were also unpleased with his services. You really have to be careful with people pulling fast ones with all that is going on now in the market.

[Laurie]

We just sold a property in Dallas and were so discouraged on how we believe our realtor sold us out. We now believe we should have fired him after the first few months - he had the listing way too long and never even wanted to put a flyer in the house - (a $ 600, 000) with no flyer - We had to keep begging him to put one in - He didn't do the things he said he would do in our initial meeting. We just have huge regrets that we didn't try another realtor that would have WORKED for us and not sold us out.