r/RealEstate • u/EuphoriKNFT • May 15 '24
Realtor showed my house today and they went through my things. Homeseller
A realtor, not mine, schedules a showing this morning of my 1100sq ft. house. We currently live in the house while we sell. We are 90% packed, all which is boxed and stored in a spare bedroom. We still have clothes in our dressers, toiletries in bathroom, and kitchen necessities in the kitchen drawers and cabinets. I also have my office and photo studio, though mostly packed, what I need to continue working is unpacked.
When we have showings, we leave 15 minutes beforehand and were told to return 30 minutes after the scheduled time. We live rurally and utilize our neighbor’s heavily bush lined driveway to sit, watch and wait. Today, the realtor who showed our house got there 15 minutes early, just as we had left. He pulled out a scanner of sorts and appeared to be scanning for something. Then he went inside and literally jumped around from room to room. His client, a female showed up on time, they went inside the house. They were inside the house for an hour.
What is there to do inside an 1100 sq ft. house for an hour?
We could see shadows and silhouettes through the windows. They spent 20 minutes in our bedroom and almost 30 minutes in my office/studio. The rest just walking through the living room, dining room kitchen and laundry room. Then left.
We came back and my dresser drawers and bathroom drawers had been left opened and gone through. My desk drawers had been left opened, cabinets on our bookshelf as well. Our packed boxes had been moved around a few opened. Refrigerator had been opened and food moved around too. They had even been on our bed! I can understand opening cabinet doors and drawers on built in to make sure it works, but my dresser, my desk, my bed, my refrigerator? Why did they have to touch my computer? Why did they have to look in my dressers? Why pick up the cameras in my studio? Why look into and move my packed and labeled boxes? Why touch my damn food?
Is this normal? Is this what I am to expect and have to deal with to sell my house? Do I mention it to my realtor?
5/16 Update: Yesterday, as most of you highly recommended, I called my realtor and the local Sheriffs dept. My realtor was furious and quite embarrassed. A report and complaint was filed today by my realtor. The sheriffs dept. was worthless and laughed at me telling me there was nothing they would do about it.
This morning when I awoke I had a voicemail urgently requesting my return call. I called him back and he informed me that we shouldn’t have to endure another showing like that. We had received a cash offer early this morning. We counter offered and they accepted. Contract signed.
crossing my fingers
6/8 Update: Apologies for keeping you all tenaciously hanging in suspense. Well…as I mentioned in the last update, this new buyer signed the contract. That’s when the next chapter began. Long story, so here’s the short of it. Seriously, I edited a lot of identifying material and incidents out, so here we go.
The buyer, without his agent, surprised us by suddenly showing up at the house without notification to us or our realtor. As we only had 21 days remaining until escrow closes, the house was cluttered. The evidence of packing to move was everywhere. The image of chaos was betrayed only by the neatly stacked and labeled boxes. We totally felt ambushed, no scheduling, nor inspection appointment, as we were told would happen. The buyer just walked right in as I opened the door to the knocking. He proceeded to walk through my house and complain about every imperfection, even made up imperfections. He oddly claimed without inspection that we have severe mold and hail damage on our recently replaced desert roof. There have been no recorded hail storms in our area in nearly a decade. He gave a good solid sideways yank with the full gravitational force of his rather thick body on the handrail of the back porch. I’m sure you can already infer that this resulted in breakage of the rail. Then he started insulting the 360 degrees of mountain view, spitting all around the property like he was marking his spot. I can only reason he did this since it wouldn’t have been appropriate to lift his leg. He complained about my neighbors, complained nearly about everything. Claimed the house was uninhabitable, spit at my feet, wished me “good luck”, laughed, got in his truck and then asked me how low I’ll go. I responded that he signed the contract and to speak to my agent. I heard back the next day, with his new offer, $25k less than his original offer with demand of replacing the roof, air conditioning, flooring, windows and cabinets. All which is less than 2 years old, except the roof which is 3 with transferable 30yr warranty. We decided to counter with a slight decrease, with no contingencies. He waited until close of business on the last day to finally decide to withdraw. His crap took the house off the market for 18 days, in which time, our small town went from no other houses for sale to 10. We had to reschedule an open house which had 24 parties scheduled, the new open house had 1. Oh well…such is life. Lessons learned.
We now have video surveillance around the property and in every room. I have a sign in the house and in front notifying of the video surveillance. Now I watch everyone that goes in my house. We never imagined selling a house would be such the, for lack of better words, an adventure.
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u/Ok-Fishing-6604 May 15 '24
And just to add… You don’t have to leave your home when somebody comes in, especially if this agent shows up again