How do I find a realtor that gives a damn about selling my house?

November 9, 2005 5:03 AM

Resources to find a good realtor remotely?

Selling a house in South Bend, IN - It's been on the market six months. It's priced apropriately (Listed at a slightly lower price than previous sales in the area, and recently given a $5000 price drop) but has had less than ten viewings in that time. The realtor dosen't seem interested in going much out of her way to advertise it any further, and becomes belligerent when I suggest she try. The most helpful input she's had so far is 'I have no idea why it's not selling'.

I'm living on the east coast now, and getting away for a week to interview a dozen realtors is kind of out of the question. FSBO is definately out. I've been scouring the web for the last month and hauled two librarians in on this: How do I find somebody who's going to get my house sold?

posted by Orb2069 to home & garden (6 comments total)

Find a local realtor who can give you a referral.

And have him or her pick one that isn't necessarily a top seller. Those guys are up to their eyeballs in business and more into volume than into helping the individual.
posted by konolia at 5:40 AM on November 9, 2005

And the realtor probably doesn't want to advertise much because it comes out of her pocket at this point. Just sayin'. She should however be able to give you a concrete reason why the house is having difficulty. One thing you need to ask is what the rest of the market looks like right now-and this is traditionally a slow time of year too. But if your house was listed thru the summer...well, gotta be a reason.
posted by konolia at 5:42 AM on November 9, 2005

Realtors have a "By Referral Only®" network that they can tap into. If you know a realtor (other than the one who is listing your house), and them to get on the BRO database and find one in the area. This worked well for me when I bought a house half-way across the country, but then again, I was buying and not selling.

Good luck!
posted by slogger at 7:50 AM on November 9, 2005

You may also want to try House Values, as the people behind it are all realtors local to the address you're evaluating. My wife's a realtor, and gets leads by this method all the time for folks that are looking to buy or sell in her area.

One thing of note: In your listing, have you specified a commission price? My wife has let me know that if you nudge up the commission price a bit, the realtors will be more likely to show your house over another similarly priced house with a lesser commission. This doesn't solve your problem of a bad selling agent, but it certainly gives a good incentive to the buying agents.
posted by thanotopsis at 8:44 AM on November 9, 2005

First the bad news: you might need to take it off the market for a while, then re-list. The marketplace has its superstitious little preconceptions about a listing 6+ months, that opened with a below-market ask, and then has dropped the ask even more. At this point, people are probably eliminating it from consideration on the assumption that there must be something wrong with it. Might as well be red stamped "DANGER: no one else wants to bid on this one!". Even if it hasn't been stigmatized yet, with this being the slow season, it's unlikely you'd get a fresh surge of interest before spring anyway. So by then, it's an even older listing with the baggage that brings.

We've run into this problem a couple times when selling investment property. A good realtor recognizes when it is (and ISN'T!) time to pull the property from the market for a while, and also has the skill to writeup the re-listing in such a way that it doesn't have to carry the burden of being "that place nobody wanted". When you phone interview agents, they should be raising these issues, and have a credible plan for bringing buyers in. Anyone whose plan is limited to another price drop is sorely lacking in creativity, experience, and a certain requisite greed.

As for who to interview--start with a list of the agents who closed those recent sales of similar properties, the ones you're using as price benchmarks.

By the way, housing sales have finally begun slowing down a bit these last few months so it might not be just your house. Ask the prospective agents how the overall regional market is doing currently, and how that compares with your house. Maybe they'll tell you 10 viewings is par for the course right now...?
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 12:02 PM on November 9, 2005

Thanks, everybody! I've contacted HouseValues - The two realtors I've contacted locally both seem to think the By Referrer thing is for buying remote houses only, and neither will discuss the listing statistics in the remote town. :(

I've also got a SB realtor looking into how well (Or poorly) the market is doing in my area. :(
posted by Orb2069 at 6:13 PM on November 10, 2005