On Ramblings, not related to the ride.

Things have been very busy for me lately, obviously, as a function of the fact that I am moving. Anyway there is a real-estate agent who mostly works the Beaches area of Toronto (I guess you could say the lower east side.) He works for the firm Keller Williams and has a team of about ten people. We used him, well someone in his team did all the "leg work", there really was not very much work done by the team in truth. Anyway the point of this preamble is to say, if you live in the GTA and need a real-estate agent, do not use my guy, his team is dreadful! A list of a few of the petty items, then the big ones, for why I cannot stand these people.

When we put our house on the market we had an agreement with the agent that they would cover staging, they told us that this was unusual, no it is not. They told us that normally the seller covers staging, no other agent I have spoken with told us we would cover staging. But after some haggling they agreed to pay for the stager, that they were going to use.

The stager came and made some changes and then the photographer came and took pictures, but one room was not cleaned up in time and rather than retake the photo they just yanked that room photo from the website. (Just a template with no site tracking and no adverts to the website that I could find.) They made a colour brochure, but not a particularly fancy one - it looked like a template with photographer supplied photos. They did not even bother to replace the stagers ad copy with the MLS feature sheet (or brochure), so every time someone came into our house they knew who the stager was, but not what features the house had, for example, I was the only home owner on my side of the street with working Air Conditioning. (The builder botched all the homes, I was the only home owner willing to cough up the $6000 to fix my Air Conditioning.)

Eventually an offer came in, it was seventy thousand dollars under asking with less than three weeks to move out. I felt we had priced our home very reasonably so I signed back ten under asking, I was pissed off. A another offer came back still fifty thousand under asking, we came back twenty under asking. Our agent had a conversation with the buyer's agent, no way would they come above forty thousand under asking, and likely not even above fifty under asking. I went to bed, pissed, our agent had tried to pressure us to settle with fifty thousand under asking. (Obviously we would not accept the offer.)

The following Sunday (a week later) we got another offer from the same couple, twenty five under the original asking price, less than two weeks to move out, oh and despite the fact that we had explicitly excluded the electric fireplace, Lesley really wanted that fireplace, the buyer had included it in the deal. Ultimately the deal was, twenty five under asking, less than two weeks, with my comment to the agent that I would not be able to move everything out in time - duh! And Lesley could keep her fireplace.

So that was that.

Except, the house was messy when I left. Of course it didn't help that I almost got an ulcer because when the idiotic buyer's agent inked the deal, they worded the one condition (buyer needed to arrange financing) so badly that when they sent in the waiver of the condition it was not worded properly and I nearly lost the deal on my new home, that I had less than twelve days to offer and close on. What happened was when I sent the waiver to my lawyer he was not satisfied that it was a proper waiver of the condition, the mortgage lender was dissatisfied and basically everyone on my buying side was unhappy and I almost missed the deal on my new home, it was sorted out, but that sort of thing should have been caught by my agent two days earlier.

Anyway I did move out, frantically, and the house was messy, sorry, I tried to keep the place clean, I really did, but frankly how can I when movers are trooping through at the rate of three pairs of boots every twenty seconds? And there just wasn't time to get all of our stuff out of there, what we did not need, we had to leave, too bad!

I left a note of apology and threw in my natural gas Vermont Castings barbecue. I figure the barbecue is worth about $400 - you try finding a good natural gas barbecue! - and it still works perfectly well. (Yes I found a replacement, but it took a lot of searching.)

We closed on the property on Friday February 25, on Sunday the 27'th, I had the following exchange with our agent:

From: BUYER
Date: 2/26/2011 1:51:39 PM
To: BUYERS AGENT
Subject: New Home
Hi Liz,

We just come into our new house and it looks like the previous owners didn't finish clearing out. The fridge and freezer are full of food. There are 2 shelves of DVD's in the basement, alot of junk in the laundry room and a storage shelf full of stuff in the garage.

From: OUR AGENT
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 10:14 AM
To: Michael Cole;
Subject: FW: Email from Buyer of 76 Woodbine

Hi Michael and Lesley, below is an email the buyer agent has received from the Buyer of your home. Was this intentional? Did you forget to get some things out or did you just leave what you did not want? Is there anything you wanted? Please advise.

From: Michael Cole
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 10:47:40 -0500
To: OUR AGENT
Subject: Re: Email from Buyer of 76 Woodbine

Of course there's a lot of stuff we didn't have time to clean out. That's what happens when they give less than two weeks to move. Everything in there is garbage.

From: OUR AGENT
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 12:40 PM
To: Michael Cole
Subject: Re: Email from Buyer of 76 Woodbine

Wow I am shocked. We did a very good job for you people and now we get treated like dirt. You accepted the closing date if it was going to be a problem you should have spoken up. You could have asked for help or even better let them know you didn't have time to move the garbage but someone would be by later to deal with. I will send some flowers as an apology on your behalf but they are billing you for 1800 got junk.

From: Michael Cole
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2011 02:16 PM
To: OUR AGENT
Subject: Re: Email from Buyer of 76 Woodbine

You told us the deal could not happen if we moved the closing date although I specifically asked for a change of closing to give us the time we needed. I have bent myself in knots trying to move out in time and get my affairs in order and this is how I am thanked?

Spare me your shock.

END OF THREAD

Now I have calculated that our agent collected $21,875 for whatever "work" and expenses she did or incurred. Allegedly our agent worked for us, allegedly. But if you live in the GTA and need an agent, I have a guy. I used him on the purchase of my new home, he is honest, he is thorough and I have never had an reason to say anything bad about him in the course of two purchases and one sale, except I disagree with his politics, he is conservative and I am very progressive, but whatever! Anyway we didn't use him on the sale because Lesley wanted to use someone who specialized in our neighbourhood and I didn't want to fight her over something so modest. By the time everything was said and done, both Lesley and I agreed (remarkably - we are separated after all) we should have used my guy instead.

That said, if you live in the GTA, avoid high profile agents working under Keller Williams, they are not to be trusted with your most valuable asset.