Response from William C Buscher on 2/14/2024

(Note: Zillow doesn't allow for paragraph formatting, so apologies for the overly-long paragraph!) We met with this individual in July of 2021 when they had difficulty selling their home as for sale by owner. When we took the meeting, we expected the house to be in much better condition than it actually was. We made several suggestions to improve the presentation of the house that were low cost but high ROI including repairing rotted wood on the soffit that would fail on the local municipal inspection, pulling weeds and other minor landscaping issues, as well as some cosmetic repairs to the interior. We offered to list the home at a reduced rate of 1% and to personally pull the weeds, mulch, and clean up the lot as well as perform some of the interior repairs because we knew the Seller was a busy professional and we wanted them to net the most on the sale. Additionally, the seller indicated that she would be selling her mother’s house in the same neighborhood and would hire the same agent for both and we committed to the same level of work and reduced rate for that potential listing. . However, after only a few interactions it became clear that the seller was not going to be a good fit for us to work with. After a follow up email that summarized our initial meeting, she responded aggressively. We declined to work with her and suggested she reach out to other agents knowing that in doing so we’d be giving up the opportunity for two listings in our home town. In the email she was upset about, we had suggested two possible strategies for her home: 1.) List the home for $349,000 in it’s current very-rough condition without investing anything into it; 2.) Perform the suggested repairs (with our free labor) and list for $399,000. She did some of our recommendations including replacing the carpet, cleaning up the lot including new mulch, and did other interior repairs before listing with another agent on 7/29/2021 for $385,000. The sale eventually closed on 10/27/2021 for $379,900 (before paying a $6,000 credit cost credit to the buyer). Ultimately, we believe she would have netted more if she had followed our recommendations (not to mention saving money with our lower commission and free labor). We had offered to list her home for only 1%, which would have included our professional marketing presentation (high-quality professional photos and 8 page brochures, google and Facebook ads, open houses, and beautiful signage) as well as our personal labor in helping with landscaping and other things around the home. We certainly work hard for our clients and provide the best marketing and would have worked hard for this Seller had we decided to take her listing. Ultimately, based on the review she left not actually having worked with us, we made the right decision.