TV sales agents
 

Recently sold house in The Villages. My advise to anyone dont go with TV sales to sell your pre owned. They will low ball your price. Go with an outside company. I made this mistake. I am now out of the rat race and happy to be away from it.

Interesting post but if you sold through The Villages what proof do you have that you would have got more with an outside agency ? Also if so would there have been a difference in time on the market ? I'm assuming you're convinced it sold too low that it must have sold very quickly. Did you talk with an outside agency before signing the seller's contract ? Why not ?

There is no way you would know what an outside company would have gotten you. Even if they listed it higher, that doesn't mean you would have gotten it. And it's easy for someone to say after the fact that they could have gotten you more. No way to know.
You also have the right to tell a realtor to list it higher if you think they are too low.

Last I knew how selling a home worked..... the seller was/is the decision maker!

I agree. Why accept a purchase offer that you felt was too low???? And if an "outside" realtor brought you the same purchase offer, would you have accepted it as well? Sorry, but this one is not on the realtor, it was your house and your acceptance of the offer.

Congratulations on the sale of your house. :MOJE_whot: :clap2: :cool:

Sounds like you made the right decision. :thumbup:

Don

It's all on you.

as a former realtor.....the only real way you know you sold the house for less than it was worth is the APPRAISAL.

If the home sold for $200 and the appraisal came in at $250

you lost....

But, if you sold for $245ish and the appraisal came in at $250....well....your on the money...

It always pays to know what you have got before you sell it. Spend around $200 or so to find out before hand.

Any listing agent should present you with numerous comparable sales in the last three months(easy to find in TV) From review of this info it would be reasonably easy to ascertain the approximate sales value of the property.

What I thought the Villages Sales Agents do is mark the price higher than an MLS agent would and then it sits on the market for awhile and then they mark it down to the price it should have been to begin with. The MLS agents seem to start out with the right price from the get go.

While it is scary, you're within your rights to refuse any offer. With every sale and purchase over our 35 years of buying and selling seven properties, we've accepted the first offer only once and we've never had our first offer accepted outright. Yes, we did lose out on one purchase but that's okay. With every sale, we had multiple real estate professionals provide their expertise and then chose which one to list the property. With that kind of decision, we need to go in with eyes wide open.

My stepson works for the Villages Real Estate. He started here in 2005. He takes his job very serious and works really hard and gets information for his customers on sales in their area.

I have seen time and time again houses priced about $10,000 too high sit on the market for over 200 days. Then they get marked down $10,000 and all of a sudden they sell overnight. I watch the market carefully and see this often. It just happened to friends of ours. I knew from the start the realtor priced it too high. It sat for 262 days. Then they changed the price and it sold in one day. It's pretty easy to see with all of the houses listed in the paper every day. Some realtors like to show the new homes currently being built instead of the pre-owned and that doesn't help any either. Not sure if their commissions are higher on those or not. I'm sure your stepson works hard. There is no question that it is a difficult job.

Not so sure about Village agents
 

I recently listed with a Village Agent. I asked what my home should sell for and they told me. They then said to list at that number and I would get 95-97% of it. Of what it is worth is how I interpret that. Then I asked what she would suggest if someone offered 10 to 12000 less than the price they said it was worth and she said she would jump on it. Does that mean they don't know what it is worth or she is just interested in getting another star on her chart? I do not think she is working in synchronicity with us (her word) as she said she would be. I am sorry we listed with her. If things don't improve she will be a goner. :rant-rave:

I'm very confused. You posted months ago complaining that your home was not selling and that you were 1 month away from the contract with TV expiring.
If it was so underpriced, seems like someone would have snatched it up right away instead of it sitting on the market for that long.

Now I'm even more confused. If you were one month away from The Villages contract ending why would you think your house was overpriced ? I think you are tweaking us. It is probably in our best interest also that you are so happy to be out.

Best suggestion on here. Thanks

.................

All agents make their money from a percentage of the sale, so unless you got one who needed fast money and you just wanted to dump the house and went below the appraised value (which you should know), I cannot see how you are ripped off. If the person you went to was a horrible person, just post his name here and shame him since you moved anyways. Maybe s/he would then be able to generalize.

Example. I could say the football San Fransisco 49ers all are horrible, but that is general and hurts the team where there are good players on the team, now if I say Colin Kaepernick on the 49ers is horrible (and I dislike him as a player as he doesn't scan the field correctly and a human; political and will not talk about it here) then I that would be a more accurate opinion.

So, name the person, don't shame the whole organization. I know 2 Village realtors and one special one in particular is a very good person, and very honest and helps people underprivileged. I'm not going to name him in the forums because he is MINE (lolololol)

We sold ours through The Villages and WE set the price. We were NEVER asked to reduce the price.
We received an offer and negotiated a sale price. House didn't sell as fast as we thought
but it did sell. The sales person could have had better communication with the sellers.

If you "knew from the start", then why blame the agent?

Because it wasn't his house? (see sentence right before your quote)

I didn't think your home was attractively presented when I first saw the pictures. Perhaps the agent suggested some ideas to spruce up the very white kitchen and you preferred not to stage it or change it, I don't know. Either the quality of photography was not good or your home, like many of it's age could have benefited from a good power washing or coat of paint.

It feels like your post was a parting shot from someone who was not happy here.

I hope you bloom in your new garden.

Grrr...sorry 'bout that!!

Bingo

Parting shot indeed.

Regrets I have a few. I does make you wonder if your house gets snapped up in a heartbeat if you could have squeezed another nickel out of it. It really just doesn't matter. Sell and get on with your life and if you are into wasting time then look in the rear view mirror and Regret the price you accepted. Take Care.

What stood out to me was the rat race comment. Most of us are retired so what rat race is the OP referring to?

Just an FYI. Villages sales agents are NOT Realtors.

THANK GOODNESS. THEY don't keep calling, they don't pester, they don't even really have to work very hard, because this place sells itself.

That Realtor thing is usually from a....wait for it.....


A REALTOR.

I too felt the home showed its age and was not attractively presented. The pool area especially, since it seemed to have no space around most of it, and there was a kissing lanai behind. I know the OP didn't like it here, and her posts about selling her house seemed like "bad berries," as we say... somewhere. (I've lived so many places I forget where we picked that expression up.)

Never tried to get the last nickel out of any real estate we sold--the best feeling was to have the property in our tail lights--if its for sale get it off your brain--you'll live longer--every month its on the mkt--you're losing $$

We were living in a totally corrupt development run by a corrupt POA, we told our agent-we want it sold NOW, starting dropping the price $10K /week--our agent said"you're killing the comps" I said if you don't sell fast--"I will donate it to a minority church" it sold the following week--that was 6 months after I installed an indoor swimming pool for my wife. She would love being able to walk directly out of the master suite and swim

"They will low ball your price". OP, I'm not sure what you meant by that statement but sounds like you had a price in mind but the village sales person market analysis came up with a lower number. Sometimes a homeowner believes their home is worth more because an exact model sold for more or was listed for more money. You can observe that two exact model homes in TV can sell for 30,000 to 50,000 more than another exact model. So many variables go into what a house will sell for and how long it will take to sell it. Interior upgrades, staging, decorations, cluter, and landscaping all pay a role in the price of your home. For this reason, I would accept a market analysis over an appraisal. An appraisal may not take into account all of those interior items that I mentioned. Sorry you didn't get the price you wanted for your home. Happy trails and sincerely hope you are "happy" in your subsequent home.

Congratulations on selling your home. Where are you living now?

As a retired real estate broker, I have one comment.
Usually it is the owner, and not the agent, who insists on listing the house higher than market value.