Sunday, January 27, 2013

Business is Business


I'm not sure if this blog post is much more than a justification of my actions, or to assuage my guilt, but I think it may also educate possible home buyers and sellers, and maybe just be a good read.
I just finished a deal with an agent who was a fellow agent in the first real estate office I joined. We have since done a few deals over the years, and have remained in contact. She was at my wedding. She is a good, solid agent, and is one of the good ones that is easy to do deals with.

I was the listing agent, and she was the buyer's agent. It was a somewhat unique set of circumstances that I secured this listing. It was a distressed property that we were attempting to short sale. I had attempted to sell this property earlier at a higher price point in which the seller would break even a few years back to no avail. So once they fell behind on payments we decided to attempt a short sale.
Short sales are not only a pain in the neck, they are also very time consuming. I contacted his bank, secured all the necessary documents, waited the obligatory weeks, called loss mitigation, waited on hold, waded through red tape and many customer service reps with varying degrees of customer service training and effort.  (Did you know an independent college study ranked customer service of large companies  across the business spectrum--from banks to insurance companies to online retailers. In all these companies customer satisfaction was 300% greater on Mon. than on Fri. The study also showed that if you use the person's name three times in the conversation you are much more likely to have a positive outcome.) However once again I have veered off topic.

At any rate just when I was thinking I was making progress, I heard the bank sold the bad dept to an investment firm. We were at square one. Luckily this was a much smaller company, and they had paid whatever cents on the dollar, so they were much more willing to short sale the property and worked well with me throughout the process. However it was a lot of work, so when I listed the property I did not do an even commission split like a normally do. I kept a point on the listing (my) side.

I have been at closings tables before and been the recipient of the smaller--buyers agent commission split, so I get it. It does leave a bad taste in your mouth and a feeling of being ill used. After all I did bring the buyer. Isn't that half the work? There are a few companies (and agents) who are notorious for this, and around the realtor water cooler it is considered a bit gauche and in bad taste.
 But in my defense, the commission offered was right in line with the "going rate" so it was not a discount on that end.  And I feel I did do quite a bit more work. The property was a good house at a good price, and I knew it would sell fairly quickly. Dangling good inventory out there for buyer's agents is a good thing right?

I explained all this to the buyer's agent, and I think she gets it. I am just left with a vague guilty feeling, and a need to have it somehow justified. Thanks for the Catholic upbringing Mom.
But like my title says--business is business.
There were 9 single family homes reported sold in the Sullivan County MLS. Click Here for Listings.
31170 finally sold. That was a favorite of mine and had been on the market awhile. It went for 143K which is a good price for that house. It is a cool brick farmhouse on seven acres. The listing says it sold FHA which is a bit surprising, because that house needed some work. (Talk about agents working hard. They must have worked very hard to push that through FHA) Congrats to whoever bought it. I am little bummed that I was not able to sell it.
 

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