I had the WORST experience with Mark Spain. I purchased a house being sold by them (tbh the agent did such a bad job- first I offered full price and they said they mispriced it, raised the price, and by then there was another bidder- it cost me $35k over asking at the end of the day.) the agent told me if I listed my house with him he'd get my offer accepted (and he did- I could say more about that but maybe not here). My whole plan was to do the guaranteed offer so I could close on time on the new place. Since I was assured there was a guaranteed offer, I removed the home sale contingency on my offer. Well, he failed to disclose to me that listing with him wasn't the same as the the guaranteed offer, which it turned out isn't always guaranteed, and because my home was in a complex with a door code, no one would do a cash offer. Therefore, I a) had to list, at a terrible time to list, b) had to borrow well over 100k for my down payment as a bridge loan and do some things that weren't ideal financially or otherwise to make it work, c) took a huge loss on the home I sold because I was so desperate to get it sold and get out of the bridge loan. All while already under contract for my new place.
The Mark Spain realtor was also severely unprofessional to the point where he left mark Spain (his narrative was he left, but it was the same day his higher ups had a conversation with him about the unprofessionalism).
Every single thing I asked to be done took days for a response, down to listing verbiage which I provided being added to the MLS. It was not listed until 2 days after I asked for it to be, while the realtor posted tiktoks of him drinking entire bottles of alcohol. He did not provide any marketing materials even when I asked and did not add any value to the transaction. Therefore I asked to be let out of my contract after wasting valuable time and forgoing my entire plan to use the guaranteed offer to allow the purchase of my new home. I am SO lucky I am in the position I'm in and was able to get the transaction to go through, but it was fully DESPITE mark spain, and I'd say 99% of people would've had to back out of the deal due to all of their missteps and lies and the very real issues they caused.
I spoke with the VP of Franklin area Mark Spain, Jan Cooper, at length. She originally seemed horrified and willing to help, but at the end of the day was only willing to help me (and marginally at that) if I kept my listing with them.. she offered a reduced commission (which I had already negotiated originally, and would not say how much better than the original negotiation it would be), but I looked and none of their realtors, even the high ranked ones, had much experience at all in downtown listings. They say they have huge numbers but they're mostly from off-market sales which is NOT the same as actually listing a home and they did not have experience in that. When I told her I'd be taking my listing elsewhere, even after telling me she completely understood why I would after what I experienced, she would not give me a dime - even though my purchase had mark Spain on both sides of it and the seller was an investment company who works directly with mark Spain. There was ample opportunity to make this right or at least offer a concession to make it even marginally acceptable, but she refused to do so. I was extremely fair and only asked for 1% of my purchase price even though I clearly lost WAY more money than that -which they were directly at fault for, and she would not give me a dime as a concession.
You will notice many good reviews here- but you'll notice they're batched to hype up one realtor for a short while in bulk, then switch to another: you'll also notice many of the people leaving these reviews are employed by Mark Spain. I've confirmed this narrative with someone employed by them that they're incentivized to do so.
If there's one company in the world I can't say enough bad things about, it's Mark Spain. I got my new home, yes, but they ROYALLY screwed me in the process, I lost SO much money, and they were entirely unaccountable. read more