Run away!
We engaged a real estate agent from Professional Realty Services to facilitate the sale of our property in San Diego County. Regrettably, the agent's performance fell way short of expectations, prompting our request to terminate the contractual agreement.
Despite the agent's words before signing the listing agreement that if the relationship fell short, she would not hold us to the contract term, Bill Richard, the Broker, declined our request for termination. The agent had us speak directly to Bill to discuss our request. He was extremely rude, tremendously condescending, and mansplained while presenting us with his two options: first, switch to another agent within the same firm, which we declined due to our dissatisfaction with his entire organization; second, he would release us from the contract only upon payment of the originally agreed commission, despite the property remaining unsold. Essentially, he wanted to charge an exorbitant fee for no services rendered.
Disheartened with their willingness to honor the agent's verbal agreement, we consulted multiple real estate attorneys - all of whom expressed surprise at the situation. They all cited Bill's behavior as uncommon since the almost certain resulting negative publicity in today's social media environment would almost certainly have a far more reaching negative impact than the one-time monetary gain resulting from the property being sold by his agency. That being said, the attorneys all advised us to endure until the contract expired and seek alternative representation. They explained that while the agent and broker failed to honor the agent's word and terminate with grace, the only recourse we had was to take the lack of performance matter to court. They believed that the case would likely have been won, but it would have taken more time to get in and out of the legal system than was left on the listing agreement. While our property eventually sold with the original listing agent, the relationship turned contentious, and the end-to-end process left us extremely dissatisfied.
San Diego County boasts a plethora of realtors; options abound! Under most circumstances, as we had and have been advised, options abound even for dissatisfied clients seeking a change in service or direction. Unfortunately, that wasn't our case. We wish we had thought twice before engaging our agent and Professional Realty Services; you should do the same. read more
