Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Good, Bad, Ugly All Day Long

Today was good, bad and ugly.

The Good: I sold a townhome....finally. The extra one. The one that was under contract before and fell through. Finally sold, for real this time. Closed and funded. And I sold it, not the realtor. I reeled in the buyer, nurtured them for weeks on end, negotiated and closed the deal. The realtor did nothing but the paperwork, and for that, he got paid handsomely. Made far more money than I did. Total highway robbery. Note to self: Don't ever hire a realtor, ever again.

The Bad: The buyer who raped and robbed us on the sale of our home in the suburbs (it's under contract at a disgustingly low price) decided to come back today for more. She wants us to lower the price yet again because some jerk-face appraiser she hired said we should. Guess what. We're not doing it. She already stole the thing, but apparently that's not quite good enough for her, so she's back. Tough. No deal. Take the ridiculously low price we agreed upon two weeks ago or take a hike. Game over. And my realtor is not helping the situation at all. Note to self: Don't ever hire a realtor, ever again.

The Ugly: The ugly situation of which I do not speak specifically continues to rear its horrid head at us. It keeps me awake at night. It's something we have to live with for now, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone. It's a terrible situation to be in, and all we can do is pray, try to keep our emotions under control and our heads clear... and endure. I don't know what else to do with this hell. It's a wonder I can function at all, and I attribute my ability to do so to two things: 1) the ability of the mind to remain in denial as a defense mechanism, and 2) the amazing grace of God. For those of you who don't know Him, I feel sympathy. His grace and generosity are boundless, and He gives me hope. I am nothing without Him.

2 comments:

SandDancer said...

The horror of real estate people! At least your lot do the paper work. Over here, your lawyer does that part - the estate agent here just takes a couple of pictures of the place + puts them on their website- they might come to the property to show you around but often they don't even bother with that. A couple of websites have started up to allow people to sell their own homes and I'm really hoping these take off soon as when I sell (not yet) I would prefer to do it without the estate agent. Ours have no qualifications and it is a largely unregulated industry, which is shocking considering what an important thing it is.

Hope the other issue is resolved soon.

M said...

Here, I'm convinced that if you can fog a mirror, you can be a realtor. A fairly successful one, in fact.

On the house in the 'burbs I just sold, I'm convinced that my realtor easily cost me $30K in selling price because she's an idiot.

On the townhome, the realtor spent six months NOT finding me a buyer. Then when I found one myself, I had to pay him $14K to do paperwork. It's practically criminal.

Here, you generally pay a realtor 6% of the selling price to sell your home (and often they split it with another realtor). This was probably a fair deal when a home costs $100K. But when a home is 5-10 times that value, they still get the 6%! For doing the same amount of work! It's highway robbery!

It's a bad deal because the amount of work they do is in no way related to the price of a house. The economics of it are way out of whack, and I refuse to hire another realtor ever again.

We also have sites here where you can sell your own home, and that's what we're doing next time. I refuse to hire these idiots again.