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NWR: Houses

My fiance and I are looking at houses. We're not in any rush and our real estate agent knows this. We told her if it takes us 5 months then it takes 6 months but if it takes 2 years then it takes 2 years. We're not looking to rush this. Anyway, she asked us for a list of what we wanted and where we were looking to move. We gave her this list. Last week she sent us 2 houses and they were in high crime areas. We're talking out of 20 crimes, 11 of them were violent if not more. I replied to her and told her they were high crime and that we did not want to even look at any houses in that area. Then today she sent me 2 more houses. Same thing..... I think I am going to look for a new real estate agent....

Re: NWR: Houses

  • I would. She doesn't seem to listen very well.

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  • You know how wedding shows kind of distort people's vision of "my big special day"? Well house hunting shows are kind of the same. On the shows, the agent always does all the research works and whisks them away to a million different homes so that's what I expected it to be like. I worked with THREE different agents and all of them basically told me "Here's the online MLS listing, you go through weekly and pick out ones you like and let me know and I'll take you to see them". I was shocked that they had me doing all the search work but again I worked with 3 and they all did this. So don't be surprised if that's how it turns out. Sure they would call me here and there with a listing, but like you said it would be above my budget or not in my preferred area. 

                                                                     

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  • FI and I did a lot of the legwork for our house hunt ourselves. Our realtor would call with listings, and once in a while they were worth looking at, but not very much. I wouldn't be surprised if your realtor also didn't know anything about the neighborhoods they're sending you listings in, so I'm not sure if you'll get better results with a new realtor. Has anyone you know used this realtor to get a house? Do they have a reputation for being aggressive on the buyers' behalf? That can be more important since you'll probably have to find the house yourself.
  •  Is she specifically sending you these house options, or is it coming via e-mail? When we were house hunting, our realtor had us linked to a website that would e-mail me new listings, that fit the criteria of what we were looking for. We'd check off the ones we wanted to see, and it would e-mail her our choices. It wasn't her choice of houses directly though. Just which ones were in our price range, etc. Maybe that's the case? 

     I think if it were me in the same situation, I'd make an appointment with your realtor & let them know what neighbourhoods you're not interested in. Maybe she's not receiving the e-mails properly? I find talking to someone in person is usually more effective anyways! If still they press certain houses you're not interested in, then I'd start looking for a new realtor! 

     Good luck!

     *J
     
  • JMalettas said:
     Is she specifically sending you these house options, or is it coming via e-mail? When we were house hunting, our realtor had us linked to a website that would e-mail me new listings, that fit the criteria of what we were looking for. We'd check off the ones we wanted to see, and it would e-mail her our choices. It wasn't her choice of houses directly though. Just which ones were in our price range, etc. Maybe that's the case? 

     I think if it were me in the same situation, I'd make an appointment with your realtor & let them know what neighbourhoods you're not interested in. Maybe she's not receiving the e-mails properly? I find talking to someone in person is usually more effective anyways! If still they press certain houses you're not interested in, then I'd start looking for a new realtor! 

     Good luck!

     *J
     

    This.  It may be an automated system that she uses to plug in your wish list.

    I also recommend going to Realtor.com (the most accurate site for listings and their status) and setting up your search terms.  They will email you with new listings as they come up and will notify you of price drops on properties that you have saved as your favorites.

    Realtors are a valuable resource, but honestly, you guys need to do a lot of the legwork.  H and I were able to eliminate some houses just by looking at the pictures on line or looking at the square footage.  The realtor shouldn't be eliminating houses that on the surface meet your requirements because they could be accused of "steering" you into or away from a neighborhood and that is illegal.

    That being said, if you tell her what towns/neighborhoods you want and she is still sending you stuff you don't want (personally, not from an automated system) you should look at a new realtor.

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  • JMalettas said:
     Is she specifically sending you these house options, or is it coming via e-mail? When we were house hunting, our realtor had us linked to a website that would e-mail me new listings, that fit the criteria of what we were looking for. We'd check off the ones we wanted to see, and it would e-mail her our choices. It wasn't her choice of houses directly though. Just which ones were in our price range, etc. Maybe that's the case? 

     I think if it were me in the same situation, I'd make an appointment with your realtor & let them know what neighbourhoods you're not interested in. Maybe she's not receiving the e-mails properly? I find talking to someone in person is usually more effective anyways! If still they press certain houses you're not interested in, then I'd start looking for a new realtor! 

     Good luck!

     *J
     

    This is what our realtor did as well. We had a meeting with them and they plugged in our price range, the areas we were interested in, our "must haves" (like 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, etc) and created a personalized site for us. We would get emails when something new was added to our site. We would then go on the site, make a list of 3 to 5 to look at over the weekend and email those to our agent. We could also leave notes, delete properties, mark ones as favorites. I'd talk to her again and really hammer out what you're looking for (even if you may not buy right away) and see if her suggestions improve. If not, then it may be time to move on to someone else. But it's not uncommon for the buyer to do a lot of the legwork as PPs have said.
  • We found our house on Zillow. I recommend setting up the automated search to email (but be aware that it isn't perfect- I had it set, I thought, to only recommend houses in good school districts but it didn't work that way and sent us houses with schools that were 2/10 along with good ones). Our realtor would send some things but the ones we found seemed to be better. 
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  • Both my mom and I found our current houses by just driving around neighborhoods in the areas we were interested in, and looking for signs.  Then if it looked like something we were interested in, we wrote down the address and realtor info and looked it up online (Realtor.com, Zillow, and our local mls). Then it it made that cut, we emailed our realtor with the ones we wanted to see. Both of our realtors would email us listings, but we found the houses we ended up purchasing ourselves. This way we knew we were comfortable with the area right off the bat, and that checked one box before we even looked more closely at the house.
  • jenna8984 said:
    You know how wedding shows kind of distort people's vision of "my big special day"? Well house hunting shows are kind of the same. On the shows, the agent always does all the research works and whisks them away to a million different homes so that's what I expected it to be like. I worked with THREE different agents and all of them basically told me "Here's the online MLS listing, you go through weekly and pick out ones you like and let me know and I'll take you to see them". I was shocked that they had me doing all the search work but again I worked with 3 and they all did this. So don't be surprised if that's how it turns out. Sure they would call me here and there with a listing, but like you said it would be above my budget or not in my preferred area. 
    @Jenna8984

    I actually haven't seen any of the house shows but I get what you're saying. I expect to be doing most of the work - afterall it's my house (when I find it)
  • FI and I did a lot of the legwork for our house hunt ourselves. Our realtor would call with listings, and once in a while they were worth looking at, but not very much. I wouldn't be surprised if your realtor also didn't know anything about the neighborhoods they're sending you listings in, so I'm not sure if you'll get better results with a new realtor. Has anyone you know used this realtor to get a house? Do they have a reputation for being aggressive on the buyers' behalf? That can be more important since you'll probably have to find the house yourself.
    @KeptInStitches

    Yes she was recommended to us by a few people and she is aggressive on the buyer's behalf.
  • JMalettas said:
     Is she specifically sending you these house options, or is it coming via e-mail? When we were house hunting, our realtor had us linked to a website that would e-mail me new listings, that fit the criteria of what we were looking for. We'd check off the ones we wanted to see, and it would e-mail her our choices. It wasn't her choice of houses directly though. Just which ones were in our price range, etc. Maybe that's the case? 

     I think if it were me in the same situation, I'd make an appointment with your realtor & let them know what neighbourhoods you're not interested in. Maybe she's not receiving the e-mails properly? I find talking to someone in person is usually more effective anyways! If still they press certain houses you're not interested in, then I'd start looking for a new realtor! 

     Good luck!

     *J
     
    @JMalettas

    Maybe. I think they're coming from her directly but definitely something to check into.
  • AprilH81 said:
    JMalettas said:
     Is she specifically sending you these house options, or is it coming via e-mail? When we were house hunting, our realtor had us linked to a website that would e-mail me new listings, that fit the criteria of what we were looking for. We'd check off the ones we wanted to see, and it would e-mail her our choices. It wasn't her choice of houses directly though. Just which ones were in our price range, etc. Maybe that's the case? 

     I think if it were me in the same situation, I'd make an appointment with your realtor & let them know what neighbourhoods you're not interested in. Maybe she's not receiving the e-mails properly? I find talking to someone in person is usually more effective anyways! If still they press certain houses you're not interested in, then I'd start looking for a new realtor! 

     Good luck!

     *J
     

    This.  It may be an automated system that she uses to plug in your wish list.

    I also recommend going to Realtor.com (the most accurate site for listings and their status) and setting up your search terms.  They will email you with new listings as they come up and will notify you of price drops on properties that you have saved as your favorites.

    Realtors are a valuable resource, but honestly, you guys need to do a lot of the legwork.  H and I were able to eliminate some houses just by looking at the pictures on line or looking at the square footage.  The realtor shouldn't be eliminating houses that on the surface meet your requirements because they could be accused of "steering" you into or away from a neighborhood and that is illegal.

    That being said, if you tell her what towns/neighborhoods you want and she is still sending you stuff you don't want (personally, not from an automated system) you should look at a new realtor.

    @AprilH81

    I will definitely look at that site. Thanks!
  • jenna8984 said:
    You know how wedding shows kind of distort people's vision of "my big special day"? Well house hunting shows are kind of the same. On the shows, the agent always does all the research works and whisks them away to a million different homes so that's what I expected it to be like. I worked with THREE different agents and all of them basically told me "Here's the online MLS listing, you go through weekly and pick out ones you like and let me know and I'll take you to see them". I was shocked that they had me doing all the search work but again I worked with 3 and they all did this. So don't be surprised if that's how it turns out. Sure they would call me here and there with a listing, but like you said it would be above my budget or not in my preferred area. 
    This! We would go through and alert her to houses we wanted to see. If there were any red flags (i.e. on a busy street, bad neighborhood) she would tell her about that before wasting our time. We found our house, she just helped us buy it. 
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