This is a little bit out of character, but I’ve just had probably my best Realtor experience ever and I feel like sharing. Two years ago I had temporarily transferred out to Virginia and had left my home in Idaho to be rented out. It was supposed to be a temporary assignment and I had intended to move back into the Idaho house at the end. Unfortunately Micron did some layoffs and I had to get a new job. The new job didn’t pay as much as the old one, which meant I couldn’t afford to pay the difference between the rent and mortgage anymore, which meant it was time to sell the Idaho house.
I started the process in April. I found a Realtor by doing a quick Internet search and chose the first one with a decent website. The logic being that a good Realtor will be well ranked in the search, and will put some effort into their website. I chose http://www.idahoproperties.com. I was quickly contacted by Zachary Lopez and we started the process.
Zachary started off by checking out the property and sending us a bunch of nice pictures of the current state of the home. I knew it would be difficult with the tenants still living there, but we had to at least give it a shot.
Our first problem was that I hadn’t lived in the home long and hadn’t paid down the principal much. Luckily I had bought the home before prices had spiked a few years ago, and the payoff was at least close to the current market prices. We decided it was worth trying at a higher price, just in case, and that we would lower the price when it looked like there was no interest.
There was no interest. We even had a complaint from another Realtor about the price per square foot! It was even more difficult since one of the tenants worked nights and the home could therefore not be shown during the day while she was sleeping.
The tenants finally moved out at the end of June. This put me in an even worse situation with the mortgage, but it wasn’t as if I could afford it anyway. Zachary suggested we leave the price as-is for just a bit since it could be properly shown now, and I agreed. We left it that way for a couple more weeks, still without offers.
Finally, we decided it was time and lowered the price. I decided on a price that I thought would leave enough room to pay off the loan, but when the offers started coming in I found out I was mistaken. Zachary, seeing my situation, helpfully offered to reduce his commission to 1%. It helped, but when the offers peaked it still wasn’t high enough to pay off my mortgage. I shared my payoff documents with Zachary and he spoke with the buyer’s agent. Things weren’t looking good for completing the sale and paying off my mortgage. Then, Zachary came through and took the bullet. He offered to pull out of the sale thereby removing his 1% from the equation and making my payoff possible. This just happened on Friday, so the sale hasn’t happened yet, but with Zachary’s sacrifice it looks like there may yet be a happy ending.
Thanks for everything, Zachary! I can easily say you have my recommendation to anyone looking for an honest and hard working Idaho Realtor.