Technology TransactionsRealty Viewpoint: Discount Broker Leaves Sellers Stranded
Rumors were flying last week that Iggy"s House, a discount broker, is out of business. If they"re not, they sure are acting like it. According to one of their clients, Janice Dowden, of Burleson, Texas, they aren"t returning phone calls or emails.
That"s put her in an uncomfortable position. She hired Iggy"s House to list her home for zero commission. Now she"s got a contract and wants the listing changed in the MLS to Pending, so other Realtors will know the status and not waste their time or gas showing her house.
She got nowhere with the Texas Real Estate Commission -- they told her that Iggy"s is listed as an active broker. She needed to talk to them or an attorney, they told her.
She faxed a copy of her listing agreement and sales contract to MetroTex, a Dallas-area association of Realtors. Seems Metrotex couldn"t find Iggy anywhere either, but they obliged Ms. Dowden by updating her listing to Contract Pending, after two days of trying to find Iggy.
Dowden"s counting herself lucky she wasn"t hurt by Iggy"s. She says if you visit Trulia.com or other listing services, there"s lots of buzz about Iggy"s.
"I understand some sellers may have paid for a more comprehensive service from Iggy"s, and some buyers are expecting a refund of part of their commission from Iggy"s," she says.
She says she"s concerned that MLSs need some guidance as to how to handle a situation where a broker goes out of business. Her MetroTex contact took care of her problem, but he had to go to a supervisor to find out the procedure.
"The contract allows me to cancel the contract with them at will," she says, "Other folks who have not sold, though, may not be so lucky -- it might be iffy for them to hire another broker without an official cancellation from Iggy"s.
She has a point. For buyers or sellers who don"t have Ms. Dowden"s knowledge or persistence, what happens to them?
A procedure to handle this sort of problem should be made available to consumers, she suggests.
Dowden had her house on the market for about nine months. After going FSBO, hiring a fee-for-service broker, and then Iggy"s house to sell her home, she says she would have been better off paying a six percent commission. "On a $200,000 house, $12,000 in commission is just too much," she says, and that"s why she tried the other routes.
In fact, there was one nice Realtor she now wishes she had hired.
"I"d like to give a plug for Dwayne Peebles with Coldwell Banker," she says without irony. "He acted like a professional, even though I didn"t list with him when he wanted me to."