Soapiesmom

Franklin might be a good choice. It's growing very fast, so lots of new people. Here's some info on Franklin:

http://www.city-data.com/city/Franklin-Wisconsin.html - Thu Jun 26 2008, 11:01

Update: we accepted an offer on our home a month and 1 day after this question, and 4 days after that, had 4 other offers, and accepted one as a secondary offer - for more money! Within that time, we had 2 price reductions for a total of $18K drop. The original offer we accepted was $8K below that. Our original list price was $150K. Once the offer was accepted I thought my troubles were over. WRONG!!!!

Our agent didn't follow up with the buyer and we ended up having to sign an extension for her financing contingency - twice. We got to the point where we didn't even have a contract to purchase for the final 2 weeks before closing. She had to go through 3 different lenders (that I know of!) before finally getting the loan and closing nearly 2 months after the accepted offer. It was a nightmare. If my agent had followed up earlier in the process, we would have been able to let the first offer expire, and be in a contract with the second offer before they pulled out (they hung on quite awhile hoping the first offer would fall through but after 3 weeks figured we were pretty well finalized on the first), thereby making more money. However, the first offer was written by my agent so she didn't have to split the commission. I feel that she totally hosed us yet again, just to keep more money. She is well aware she not only is not getting any recommendations from us, but that everyone we know has her name and is encouraged to spread the word that she is worthless.

The agent that helped us buy our new home was like a tiger with our listing agent in following up on her. To the point she wouldn't even call him directly, but strictly use his voice mail. He is who got our buyer set up with her final lender. We feel he is the one who got the deal closed. AND he got no commission for all the work he did on our house, only the one we bought through him. Therefore, when all was said and done, we gave him a VISA card for $500 as a thank you. And we are touting his ability to get results, as mentioned in one of the responses below.

My lesson learned: buyer's agents and seller's agents are 2 very different types of people. A person may be good at one, and not the other. Therefore, research their results in whichever capacity you need them, and follow up by phone or email every day even if it is just the Realtor shooting off a quick email of "no activity today, left messages for follow up calls to Tuesday's showing", all the way up to contact with the Realtor multiple times a day during the escrow process.

We're never moving again! :) - Thu Jun 26 2008, 10:49

Thanks to all for your opinions/experience. I have realized that we just did not pick a realtor who cares about what we want. I took the suggestions from other posts and I talked to her on the phone, I emailed her, and I finally called her broker today, when her answers were not satisfactory to me. He refused to release me from our contract, OR to assign a different realtor! He says that because she's gotten us two showings in the last 5 days, that she's obvisouly trying and we're stuck.

We are not the crazy pet people. Our house is clean. Like I said before, we have had two showings now in the alst 5 days. So, that's a start. AND we got feedback from one. My agent asked if there was anything we could do to "make the house more presentable". Her way of asking about the pet odor, I guess. They said that the buyer thought it was cute, just wasn't ready to offer because he wanted to see more houses. NOTHING negative, even when she asked for it, and NO mention of pet odor. The pet odor is there to people without pets, we would be naive to think we had eradicated it completely, which is why I said what I did. However, we will not kennel our pets for a realtor/agency who refuses to do reasonable marketing. Online and email blitzes are FREE. And she REFUSED to do them. Says they won't work and it's not worth the time.

So, to sum up: my realtor says my price is what it should be, INCLUDING taking into consideration the inevitable pet odor!!!!! I want to make that clear because everyone keeps hammering pricing. She says we should NOT drop. She says our staging is great, the house is clean (keep it that way, is what she said. Not "get it clean." Keep. Keep.) I ask her: what else can we do to help you sell this place? That's it. Keep it clean and control the pet odor.

I am going to probably condense aquariums down to one (which cannot be removed due to it being custom built IN THE FREAKING WALL!!!!), hide the hamsters somewhere during a showing (the dogs are removed during showings and cats are all crated so as not to be roaming everywhere in front of people), and suggest to my realtor that we would be willing to kennel for two weeks as Keith suggested, IF and ONLY if, she is willing to do intensive online marketing, as well as be more open to our requests for the remainder of her contract.

I figure i'm probably the "crazy pet person" to a lot of you, but we have done everything asked of us regarding their presence.

And I'm about to drop a bombshell on all of you, I'm sure: our realtor actaully never asked us to remove the pets, if any of you even believe that. I am the one who said the odor wouldn't go away until the pets do, and she agreed. Not at that point, nor any time before or after, has she suggested removing them, even for a brief time. She has even told us it would be ok for us to leave the dogs in the kennels during an open house!!!!! What do you guys think about that????? Think I'm just a crazy pet person now, or think I may not be completely getting great advice/service from her? So, we are doing more to control the odor than she has even suggested we do, because we have always heard to eliminate completely, and we're doing all we can other than removing them, and BECAUSE WE ARE MOTIVATED TO SELL, whether or not most of you believe that.

And to those that think I'm not motivated, I just want to say that not everyone lives in a world full of pets, but not everyone lives in a world void of them. And I have no hope of ever finding those people who are not allergic, asthmatic, or just averse to the pet odor, if my agent REFUSES to do reasonable marketing. And I think that requesting her to put my house on her own company's website is pretty darn reasonable!! - Wed Mar 5 2008, 17:31

Re: why the long open house: A couple months ago, our agent left an open house sign with us and suggested we put it out in the yard any time we are home and can let people view the house. Since we are extremely motivated to sell our house, we are willing to do this. Since she was already supposed to advertise the open house in the paper, we asked her to advertise it for longer hours because we would have the sign out anyways, why not have it advertised. - Sun Mar 2 2008, 20:33

that the house was open today. We feel it is our realtor's job to make sure the office staff are doing their part, and she shouldn't just "pass the buck" and say they or the newspaper didn't do things right. At the least it should have been on their own website!

This is not the first time she has not advertised an open house in the paper. Once she intentionally advertised ONLY online. She is the one suggesting all the open houses, and we offered to take over in order to have a longer open house since it would already be in the paper and we are really motivated to sell our house.

Our listing contract says, "put in MLS, on the internet, and advertising as necessary to procure a buyer".

It just took her 5 days to update our price drop in MLS, and now this. It also took me asking her for over a month to put up interior pictures of our house (which I had sent her before we even signed the listing contract!), for her to even get those up.

Is this enough to terminate my listing with her, or am I stuck? - Sun Mar 2 2008, 13:05

Thank you for the suggestions. We are lucky in that we have no carpet in our home. We also do not allow our pets in the living room, dining room, or guest bedroom. The rooms they spend 90% of their time in are the family room, office, our bedroom, and the workshop where their kennels are. All of those rooms other than our bedroom are in the basement.... which is very hard to air out. We painted 3 coats of KILZ and 4 coats of floor paint on the cement floors of the workshop and laundry room, along with repainting the walls in those rooms, and we washed down the walls and other flooring in the finished rooms with bleach water. I guess that I feel that if you are a person who doesn't have pets, that there is NO way you are not going to know that we have pets. We have 3 dogs, 4 cats, 2 hamsters (my sister's who is at college), and 2 large aquariums.

We had a showing yesterday and an open house scheduled for tomorrow, so will see what the feedback from those are. Keeping our fingers crossed that it's better. We are looking at the air purifiers, too, tomorrow. Thinking we can get a few smaller ones, one for each room, like suggested below. - Sat Mar 1 2008, 17:31