Agents - What would you do? Seller wants out of his contract.
What would you do? Here's the scenario:
I helped a first-time rehabber to buy a house several months ago. Built in 1920, 4 beds, 2 baths, 2016 sq ft, master suite. It's in a very high end town near Boston. He financed it with hard money.
The fatal mistake is that he rebuilt it to its original layout. The beds are small and all of the closets are really tiny - about 7 feet wide and maybe 2 feet deep.
Picture this: It's a rectangle. Across the north end is an eat-in kitchen.
Across the east side are 3 beds, one of which is extra small. There's a shared bath just outside the bed in the corner.
Across the west side is a master bed with master bath. Both baths have tubs - no walk-in showers.
In the middle is a 750 sq ft (!!!) great room, with the original huge stone fireplace.
The basement is original and not full height. The stairs from the kitchen are a lot more like a ladder than steps, making it hard to use for much of anything, though there's a bulkhead too.
There are no other rooms. No storage - not even in the attic, because the blown-in insulation is deeper than the joists. Just beds, baths, kitchen and HUGE great room which is a colossal waste of space.
When we bought it, the comps said it should sell at $600,000, but due to the fact that he didn't do anything to make better use of the space, it's not selling. In fact, we've reduced the price in $25,000 increments and have been at $475,000 for 3 weeks. We're getting showings but no offers.
He's literally begging me to release him from our contract so he can sell it to a wholesaler. My counter offer is to let me present it to the wholesalers and reduce the commission, because there's none for a buyer's agent.
He's not happy with that. He still wants release.
Mind you, I've done 11 open house events so far, spent hundreds of
dollars on FB and Google ads and put at least 1,500 miles on my car for
this sale. I have never put so much time, work and money into selling a property - not even close.
I just feel like I've done way too much to walk away from a binding contract without compensation.
So what would you do?
Kitchen
Master bedroom
Great room, Laundry on the left, shared bath on the right.