Buyer Beware:
We found Tiffany Ireland Realty through Dave Ramsey's Endorsed Provider Program. We had hoped this would ensure us a reliable, capable, and knowledgeable realtor - sadly, we were immensely disappointed. Tiffany advertises herself as a realtor experience in working with out-of-state buyers (which we were) and military families utilizing a VA Loan (which we are). A quick meeting with Tiffany and her "Buyer's Agent" CJ Jesneck proved they could say all the right things. We were pleased and moved forward to looking at houses.
After being handed off entirely to Buyer's Agent CJ, we were unimpressed. However, we had found on our own a house that we were interested in, and CJ set up the appointment for us to see it. We only had a brief period of time in town, and needed to make an offer. Since we had completed the "finding" aspect of the home, we figured it wouldn't be *too* difficult to proceed with CJ. Once again, we were wrong. We were again urged to sign a "Buyer's Agent Exclusivity Contract" with CJ, meaning that we would use CJ exclusively as our agent for a period of one year, and if we proceeded to use another agent would still be responsible to pay commission to CJ and Tiffany Ireland Realty. Because of our concerns with CJ, we had her amend her contract to apply singularly to the house on which we were placing an offer. We were repeatedly told by CJ and Tiffany that the security of a Buyer's Agent is that they are legally bound to represent your best interests. We found quite quickly that in addition to incompetence, CJ and Tiffany were much more interested in representing the interests of the seller, and securing their interests, than representing our own needs in the transaction. While we did end up purchasing our desired home, it was for sheer determination on our part that all went through. Just some of our specific issues (all brought to Tiffany's attention, and disregarded, below). I would encourage buyers to find a different agent: preferably a larger group, dealing in more expensive real estate, moving through more inventory of homes, and not requiring a Buyer's Agent Contract. For us, it was a red flag, and we ought to have heeded it.
1. CJ did not provide us with homes we may want to see or guidance in finding them. We found the homes, and she had not reviewed the listings with additional information from the multiple listings as to whether it would be a house we would want to see. (Ex: Marijuana grown/smoked in the basement of a home which smelled throughout the house). Upon walking through homes, CJ scrolled through her phone unattentive to our likes/dislikes and had no knowledge of the homes/sellers/etc.
2. Once we decided we wanted to place an offer on our house, CJ advised us to give our "best and highest offer" and to "not negotiate". The home had been on the market for 30+ days and was overpriced. When we received a counter, she advised to "accept right away". She urges us not to ask for concessions, negotiate closing date, or price. In other words, our "Buyers Agent" refused to negotiate for us. Ultimately, we purchased the home for over $30k under the original list price ($15k under the current list price) and received $10k towards closing costs, as well as the 60 day close we needed. This was to the chagrin of our own agent.
3. In drafting our offer, CJ had to revise the contract four times to correct serious errors in offer - either additional costs she wanted us to pay to the sellers that we had not agreed to, incorrect offer price, incorrect closing date, and incorrect possession date. Had we not thoroughly read before signing and submitting we would have subjected ourselves to a negative situation for us.
4. CJ did not know how to read our contract in terms of contingencies: whether the contract referred to calendar days or business days, and how/when those days were counted.
5. CJ advised that a home inspection "was just a formality" and that it did not matter whether we had a chance to review the inspection report before our inspection contingency was up. Significant mold was subsequently found in the attic.
6. CJ's errors continued: providing incorrect information to other parties (inspector, mortgage company, title, etc), ran late for appointments, returned emails days late. After we asked Tiffany to step in and help, little changed. We were met with now, two agents who held the interests of the buyers above our own. Despite continued communication on our part to both CJ and Tiffany as the process continued, we had repeated issues with paperwork (on their end), and communication to the seller's agent on addendums, and closing dates/times which resulted in repeated problems, and additional expense to us, as buyers.
The entire process was an unhappy event, only made better with time. I would urge anyone looking to buy a home in the Grand Rapids area to look elsewhere for agents. read more
