I recently used The Jills to sell my home in Miami-Dade County. I had heard very good things about them prior to engaging them to handle the listing. They are a very high profile Miami-based real estate agency, having boasted about several high profile clients using them, etc.
My experience with them was a bit of a mixed bag. While I think they have a reasonably professional approach to the business, I don't think they are terribly effective at finding buyers (or at least weren't for my property) and believe some of their business practices leave a lot to be desired.
With respect to finding buyers, they did show the property several times to qualified buyers. The prospective purchasers however were not customers of The Jills, but rather came from other agents who saw and viewed the property via MLS. One of the reasons I hired The Jills was I thought that in difficult economic times, having a powerful marketing agent who has a wealth of clients and prospective buyers would be important, but in the end all of the interest came from outside of The Jills, so I cannot conclude they generated buyers.
My biggest complaint with this firm relates to their business practices, specifically I believe they handled a commission dispute in a highly unethical manner. Here's what happened: when a pre-existing tenant moved out, The Jills assisted me in bringing in a new tenant. They didn't actually find the new tenant, but rather the new tenant was aware that the property might be for rent and contacted my agent directly. The new tenant signed a lease and The Jills were paid a commission for handling the rental, and continued to market the property for sale on my behalf. A handful of months into the new tenant's lease, the tenant decided to purchase the unit. This generated a substantial commission for The Jills, as is typical with real estate transactions handled by brokers. What The Jills chose not to do however, was to credit back to me the unearned portion of the rental commission that they were paid at the outset of the new tenant's lease just a few months after the tenant moved in.
Now while there was no contractual agreement specifically addressing this issue, my research into this discovered that it is very common business practice in both residential and commercial real estate to credit back to the owner any paid but unearned commissions when a tenant decides to purchase the unit. As the closing date of the sale approached, I raised the issue with The Jills several times in a very respectful, professional manner and described the practice as unethical, uncommon and frankly a bit greedy, their response was firm - they do not feel they owed me a thing despite the common practice that exists in the industry. They are guilty of 'double-dipping' - ie - being paid twice when in fact they should've been paid once. In fact in a previous rental agreement for the same property using two different Miami brokers, both agents pro-actively included language in the rental agreement that stated if the tenant were to buy the property, i would be credited back with these unearned fees. So The Jills decision to not engage in the same practice was surprising and needless to say disappointing.
Ironically enough despite an excellent relationship and rapport with the agent from The Jills who handled the transaction, this agent has not communicated with me once since the closing of the transaction - no phone call to say thank you, I enjoyed working with you, no email, absolutely nothing which is also surprising, arrogant and unprofessional.
So to conclude, my experience with The Jills was a mixed bag, and I would not recommend others use them for buying and selling Miami real estate due to this unethical business practice and lack of professionalism. In particular if you do use them to sell your property and they also are paid for a rental as well, make sure you put in writing that you will receive a credit for the unearned portion of the rental commission. read more