Ray

I am the person who posted the question originally. Here's the thing- I am considering putting in a higher offer than I originally was going to, but my agent has been practically worthless in providing me with opinions or input. I have to really dig to get questions answered that he should be the one asking me proactively. All his answers seem to be about doing the least work possible for him. After telling him I wanted to make an offer, for example, I had to be the one to ask him to provide comps to gauge a fair price. He then sends over a bunch of comp info with no analysis or explanation whatsoever. He knows I am a first time buyer and needs to be more handheld but is treating me like I should know everything I want myself. He is very vague everytime I have asked him if a property seems to be a good value or a fair price. He just defers to "you have to decide if you like to live there. That is what makes it valuable to you." I have only been with this agent for two different rounds of viewing properties which each time lasted about 2 hours. He has provided me with a total of 3 emails worth of listings to consider viewing. I was only actively working with him for 2 weeks before deciding to concentrate on the property I am considering and have not gone on any viewings of other properties since. I have had to deal directly with the seller's agent to set up multiple revisits and the seller's agent has been 10 times more helpful at explaining how the process works to me and what factors I should consider. Even when I initially told him an offer amount to make, he was going to write the offer without going over with me any contingencies I might want to add or even spend one sentence explaining how the offer process worked. I just told him, I'd like to offer XX amount, and he said, OK, I'll write and submit the offer. Basically, I feel my agent did at most 5 or 6 hours of work total (including the time spent going with me to see properties) and I really don't want to give him his 3% commission on the sale (which will come to at least $18,000 for him) when he hasn't been the least bit helpful. the problem is I really like the property. Any suggestions on what I can do? Talking to him isn't going to help as I feel I have to pull teeth to get him to answer my questions already. - Sat Jul 26 2008, 04:19