DOM – Days on market is not anything a listing agent controls. When you enter a listing and the listing is active the clock ticks. Agents cannot stop the clock.
The “manipulation” you are speaking of is when properties appear new again due to being cancelled or expired.
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As egregious as this may seem it is not even worthy of being called manipulation. Any agent can look at the listing history and see when tricks like this have occurred.
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Photo Deception – Yes if a home has 4 crappy rooms and 1 nice room why would anyone want to take pictures of the 4 crappy rooms? Most listing agents give the sellers a list of what should be done prior to taking pictures of the home. Guess how much of that work is usually done by sellers?
So how many people out there have gone to listings where the pictures were better then the homes?
***Lots of hands raised****
Now, how many of you feel you were victimized and manipulated, that you bought that home because the pictures were just so damn good that you could not pass on the home?
Now how many of you feel that if there were some other medium besides the MLS, and that this other medium allowed pictures to be posted, that the exact same thing would happen?
Maybe we should have the picture police come and audit every home on the market. You get fined if your pictures are not correct.
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Listing Status Deception –
There is not really such a thing. In the case that CAR brought up, there was nothing deceptive. The listing was contingent before it hit the MLS. I am not saying the example of what happened with the transaction was right or not right. I have had a listing pending before it hit the MLS before. I have had sellers who already had buyers they wanted to sell the home to. It goes on the MLS and is Active for a few seconds and then it is Pending. Why is this a crime and tell me what has been manipulated here? In fact, if you have a listing that is contingent or under contract, you can get in trouble if you leave it as Active.
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If you wanna be bent be bent about the right things okay?
Common problems include innaccurate size description of the home. People include square footage that should be or should at least contain comments that parts of the square footage is for unpermitted work. Homes that are listed as Active and are really not active anymore.
The process is not great and can stand improvement yet I look around and see plenty of people (even bearish piggs) buying homes. Despite the claims that every short sale is rigged, that all the reos don’t work unless you do it yourself and go to the listing agent, despite claims that child support and deadbeat dads will cause your escrow to go south… despite all these claims of fraud and double ending and backdoor dealings…. somehow plenty of people still seem to be getting deals done.
Does bad stuff happen? Yes. You wanna let it jade you that is fine, nobody is forcing a gun to your head, don’t participate in the game.
