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Help! I’m being held hostage by my listing agent!

Today is the third time in recent weeks that  a Seller who is listed with another local agency, has contacted me to say  that they are unhappy with their current agent and the Broker will NOT release them from the listing contract.  The one I heard from today has been  locked into a  contract with this agency for….sit down for this one….  FIFTEEN months (I believe it was renewed after a year and now runs several more months).  She said that she is so disgusted that she is going to make sure that anyone she knows looking to hire a Realtor does NOT use this company.  Now, why would this company want to risk ruining their reputation by holding an unhappy client hostage?  Where is the win-win here?

Moral of the story, if  you’re interviewing Realtors, do yourself a favor and make sure your contract has a clause stating that it is cancellable with a reasonable  amount of notice.  Agents who offer this obviously have the confidence in their ability to get your house sold , and agents who insist on locking you into a long contract because it’s their company policy, well… as far as I’m concerned, their company policy needs to be a win-win, or no deal.

Yours to count on,

Sue  (973)464-9129

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 8:16 pm and is filed under In The News, Selling a home in this market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Precision Garage NJ said at December 14th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

   I agree completely. One of the worst things any company can do is to lock their customers into a contract, whether it be real estate or any other service. Leaving a bad taste in the customers mouth is going to be worse in the long run and definitely won’t result in referrals.

   I think this is the same reason many gyms no longer do 2-3 year contracts and are instead offering monthly memberships.

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