Real Estate Highs and Lows

As I mentioned in my previous post, Whitesnake and I decided to sell our home last year. Our real estate agent organised what is know in New Zealand as a caravan, to come through our home for a visit. Basically, this means all the agents from his company come through the house at the same time for a viewing of the property, before it goes to the market for sale.

Later on the same day, our agent informed us that one of the agents would like to make an offer on the house before it went on the market and if we accepted his offer, we would not be charged marketing costs. He made us a great offer and we were happy to save a little money on costs so we accepted it. We signed an agreement and were thrilled that we sold our home without the hassle of open homes, etc. A little while later, our agent phoned us to let us know he had been fired. We were shocked and extremely concerned. Apparently, he had been warned several times not to sell a house, without showing it to the market first. His manager called to apologise and set up a meeting to explain.

A couple of days later, the manager met with us and again was very apologetic. He explained that if the house had gone to the market, we would have received a lot more money than we had sold it for. So the agent that bought the house got a bargain but we had lost a significant amount of money. Thankfully, he didn't charge us the rather large seller's fee so in the end, we actually saved about the same amount we were short on the sale. We were happy with the result.

I must say I learned a lot from the experience. My gut feeling at the time had been that something wasn't quite right but Whitesnake and I had been offered a deal we thought at the time, we would be crazy to refuse. I now rely much more on my gut feeling and am not as naïve to believe everybody is as trustworthy as I am. 

More about our journey soon.

Love KB

xxx