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Seeing Other Agents
Cate Engel and her husband had been trying to sell their house in Gaithersburg for nearly six months when they ended the contract with their agent.
(By Katherine Frey -- The Washington Post)
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"The buyers in this market are a lot more skittish than they were before," said Brandon Green, an agent with Keller Williams Capital Properties in Columbia Heights. It used to be, Green said: "you put your money in a bag and put it on the table, and whoever has the biggest bag of money wins. . . . Now you have to negotiate more."
Kristi Nadler, 34, didn't even get to negotiate before she realized she needed a new agent. Hers insisted that she make a decision after seeing just two houses in Maryland. The owner was at one of the houses during her visit. Nadler tried to ask questions, but her agent repeatedly interrupted her.
"It didn't seem like he wanted to help," she said. "I don't know why. That was his job. I felt like I was kind of a burden."
She didn't call him back. At a friend's suggestion, she switched to Maria Princi of Coldwell Banker in Chevy Chase. Princi, she said, showed her about 50 houses. Nadler decided on a three-bedroom in Bowie in March.
But if you think you can just walk away from an agent, think again. Most likely, particularly if you're selling, you have a signed contract.
Designed to ensure that the agent receives a commission if he or she has anything to do with the transaction, contracts are not easy to break. Sometimes they even stipulate that the agent is due the commission for a certain period of time afterward.
"You can't just arbitrarily terminate it, because they're still entitled to a fee for the transaction," said Seth Stark, a partner at the Rockville law firm Stark, Meyers, Eisler & Leatham.
Stark recommends that if you're unhappy with your agent to talk to his or her broker or manager. Your contract is with your agent's brokerage, not the individual agent, he said. Sometimes the broker will assign you a different agent or let you out of the contract.
Laura Fall, the broker at Fall Properties in Arlington, said the client should be ready to pay to get out of the agreement. "I do think that most brokerage companies don't want an unhappy client and will release them as long as expenses are reimbursed," she said. For instance, agents, not their clients, usually pay for advertising.
Rarely, but sometimes, the contract will state that the client can end the relationship if dissatisfied.
"If they don't like us and they don't like what we're doing, we don't want to force them into a situation they're not happy with," said Green, whose contract allows an out as long at the client gives 24-hour written notification. (No client has ever taken him up on that, he said.)
There are also some things you can do upfront to protect yourself. If you don't like the terms of the contract, negotiate different ones. And don't lock yourself in for too long. Many agents prefer six-month agreements, but Stark recommends that sellers sign up for no more than four months. "That gives you some wiggle room," he said.
