Regarding the kitchen… we are just going to have to angle the shots away from top of refrigerator. Probably have no choice
Interesting contact from an agent today. The agent who sold this house to me has been calling and coming by angling to get the listing for this property. I don’t blame him, that’s his job. But I have explained that I have a long standing relationship with my agent.
Today he calls urgently. He has a ‘referral’ from an agent in San Francisco and they will be showing a client around to look at homes in the Point Loma area. The client is looking for panoramic views. He talked up my house but told the client it was going up for sale at $1.5 million (way low at this point). That’s understandable because that is a number that I discussed with him earlier this year.
But the interesting issue is that he claimed, since he had to pay the referring agent, he needed me to sign a one time listing agreement and pay 4% commission. I explained that I have just yesterday signed an Exclusive Listing agreement with my agent and I cannot sign any other agreement. I politely told him I would crunch some numbers and get back to him.
Got off the phone and realized that this is a slimy scam. I’m probably giving away some kind of real estate secret here… but, when an agent refers a client to an out of town agent, the referring agent gets 25% of whatever commission the local agent gets from the sale. Noone pays an ‘additional’ commission to the referring agent. The local agent pays out of their commission as a referral fee. This guy was trying to make it out like they were going to have to pay another office a full commission or something. I also have to pay my agent (because I would never go back on my word to her and we have a contractual listing agreement) on top of this 4% commission to the selling agent. He wanted me to fork out an additional $30,000 to him for the honor of him bringing an out of town client. To be honest, he probably didn’t know that I already had a listing agreement and was trying to get the listing for both sides of the transaction. In that case 4% would be a reasonable commission.
I had to draft an extremely polite email to the agent explaining that, because the house wasn’t even on the market yet and we had not ‘tested the waters’, I was not in a position to pay an extra 1.5% commission for a transaction. Also, I don’t feel that the client is in the right price range since they told him $1.5 million already and I would feel bad that they have to go back and say ‘Ooops… it’s this price’. I need to be really careful because I do not want to burn any bridges since they have now brought me 2 really good deals for purchases.
Painting the roof seems extreme; I usually say to take the extra steps to do things right, but if I were a buyer I’d assume that the new tiles would fade to the color of the old ones in a couple of months. I wouldn’t risk marring the pristine stucco by spraying paint up there.
If the agent who contacted you produced a buyer, wouldn’t he simply be treated as a buyer’s agent, and split the commission with your listing agent? I’d just tell him the price you decide on without explanations or apologies.
He was asking for 4% commission instead of the normal 2.5% offered to the buyer’s agent.
Unfortunately it will take 10 years for new roof to oxidize to same color as old roof. Its hard to tell buyers “Don’t worry, the roofs will match in 10 to 12 years”
“But the interesting issue is that he claimed, since he had to pay the referring agent, he needed me to sign a one time listing agreement and pay 4% commission.”. 8-
oy vey…
this is the kind of scumbag that gives hard working, ethical RE agents a bad name.
tell him to stick it where the sun doesnt shine…|
its his CHOICE what % to pay referring agents.
Its his problem , not yours.
I will say one other thing-
I think you would be making a BIG mistake showing the house to ANYONE before it is completely done.
Houses in the $$ range that yours could go for need to give a first impression of “WOW!!!” , not one of “does she have the $$ to finish it or is she desperate to get an offer?”
i.e there should be no excuses like ’ the glass will be installed next week" or " the doors over the fridge will come in a few weeks"
it will make no difference when the deal will actually close for buyers with the kind of $$ that it will take to buy your flip.
so finish it completely before you market it- that will make it far easier for you agent to sell it- FAST.
For tax purposes and your ACA premium, would it be better to sell it in early 2017 rather than late 2016?
I think I kind of agree with @menloparkmom. (I know that’s a very tepid agreement.) cb, I understand that having the photos and getting the agents excited before Thanksgiving seems important and a significant milestone, but I think you need to take a deep breath and consider how essential that timing is. You are bumping into some significant issues – the glass on the deck, the cabinets above the fridge, the tiles on the roof – and if those important things don’t look right when people start to see the house, it will not serve you well in the long run. If you can get all these issues resolved in the short term, by all means go full steam ahead – but, as you said, in this price range, people will not be rushing to buy a house over the holidays.
This is what you said your agent said, in an earlier post:
I don’t seen the necessity of aiming for this timeframe.
As for the slimy RE agent – you were very wise to carefully craft your response to him. Someone who has brought you two great deals is not someone you want to annoy. He may be thinking that you “owe” him, however. Too bad.
I do feel that these agents (father and son) feel that I ‘owe’ them a bit. After thinking about it overnight I don’t think they were as slimy as I thought. They had no idea that I had signed the listing agreement with my agent yet. They were asking for a ‘one time’ listing agreement with a 4% commission (which is lower than normal). So, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. They wanted to represent both buyer and seller, not just the buyer.
I need to keep a really good relationship with them. Also, I don’t think their out of town buyer is in the higher price range that we ended up at.
I sent a thorough email to my agent with the list of items that are possibly not going to be done by Thursday or Thanksgiving. I’m going to have her come over on Monday and look at the roof situation. I tried to take a picture last night but it was already too dark.
I loaded a bunch of photos to the Flickr group
I think you need a nice album with pictures of the views at varying times of the day…from varying places. It can be placed on the counter in the kitchen.
We didn’t have views, but we had gorgeous plantings that flowered all year. I prepared a nice photo album with pics of the blooming things so folks could see them. Our house was listed in very early spring before things bloomed.
Our agent thought this was a great idea.
The pictures look good, cb.
“She is adamant that she wants it out there before Thanksgiving. These would be the agents that might have pent up buyers in the price range and are probably heavily employed and would be available Thanksgiving weekend.”
In my opinion this is NUTS.
buyers that have THAT kind of $$ are NOT going to be house hunting on the long 4 day Thanksgiving weekend.
They will be out of town or with their families.
I think your agent just wants to get the house on the market as soon as possible to help her own business- at your expense.
I am also flummoxed by the rush to get an incomplete house on the market…at any price. And I agree…folks spending at your price point are probably not going to be house shopping Thanksgiving weekend.
If I were even thinking about spending over $1.5 million on a house, I would expect it to be completely done.
There are lots of homes in and above your price range in HI. The higher the price, the pickier the buyers. You will make a VERY expensive mistake by rushing at this point when your house won’t be complete and looking it’s best. You will sacrifice a lot if $$$$ if you start showing it prematurely before you fix these items you know you can fix.
So sorry to hear of the roof tile difficulty.
It seems like a horrible move to let anyone see the house or to put it on the market until it is completely finished. Otherwise you risk getting the completely wrong “buzz” out there on the grapevine.
House-hunting over the Thanksgiving weekend – Who does that?!
I know you have great faith in your agent, but her rational in this instance does not seem to serve you well at all if top dollar is your goal.
Yes, buzz can make or break your house and greatly affect your ability to get top offers
My agent and I went to the project today to figure out the roof issue. She admits that the color difference is very noticeable. I also had a contractor come over and look at it. They decided that ‘it is what it is’ and we should not try to get up there and paint it. Too much human risk… do you send roofers up to paint? Or do you send painters up onto the steep roof and kill themselves?
We are going to wait and see until the remainder of the original roof gets installed back onto the house. But, then it may be too late because there won’t be any safe way to crawl up onto the roof without breaking a bunch of the old tiles. There is not an easy solution to this one. Even throwing money at it isn’t going to solve the problem. Who knows if we can even get the paint to match in any way? IIt would be preferable to roll special concrete paint on, but the tiles are so dimensional we will never get paint into all the grooves with a roller. It may end up being worse than when we started
I’d be very cautious about concrete tiles. You really don’t want them cracked and having to repair and replace. Sorry this has emerged as a new issue. It sounds very frustrating!
Can you paint the tiles before they go up? Perhaps with a sprayer?