Brett Lueken

We found him polite and initially interested in helping us sell our property. While we sold our house quickly, we did not feel it was due to his efforts. He estimated our house worth in an earlier meeting, then suggested we price it 10-15K less. We decided to price it higher and received a full offer shortly after putting on the market. We had questions and follow up before, during and after home inspection and prior to closing, and felt he'd lost interest and rarely answered questions or called back with information we had requested.

My husband and I decided to sell our 2300 sq. ft. 5 bedroom, 2.5 bath home located in central Lafayette. Since our real estate agent had moved out of town, we had to find a new agent to list our house. We were familiar with Brett, as he had been partners with our former agent. We hired him to list and sell our house in September 2011 for a six-month contract to wrap up on March 23rd, 2012 with a 6% commission, 5% if he represented both sides. During those six months, Brett's team was very good to try and keep us informed about all the showings and the feedback from the showings. It was a little hard to get in touch with Brett himself, but his team was always prompt and responsive. By the end of our contract, we felt that Brett and his team had done what they could to sell the house, but it was pretty clear that the house wasn't going to sell for what we wanted at this time in this market. We had accepted two different offers and both of them had fallen through in the final stages. We informed Brett that we wouldn't be extending his contract after the 23rd, and that we'd be putting the house on the rental market. His office informed me that our contract wasn't up until March 30th, which was a week after the date that was written on the original contract that we had signed. I assume the contract was amended since we had turned the contract back in with our signatures a few days late, but I was never informed that it had affected the end date of our contract. We had already found someone who was willing to start renting the house as soon as our contract was over on the 23rd, and, after learning that our contract went for an extra week, they agreed to wait until April 1st. However, on the last day of our contract with Brett, he called us at 8:00 p.m. to say that he had an offer for us. He was representing the buyers, and the offer was at the very bottom end of our acceptable range. We were tempted to counter to ask for a little more, but by the end of a very long and frustrating six month process, we just wanted it to be finished. We accepted the offer with a closing date scheduled for April 30th, 2011. We were selling the house "as-is", and the buyers had signed an additional document stating that they realized we would not pay for any repairs to the property, even though the property clearly needed some work. However, after the inspection, the buyers (whom Brett was also representing) asked us to repair the a/c and also wanted a $1500 repair credit at closing. The a/c repair was mandatory for their loan to be approved, so we had no choice but to fix that, but the repair credit? Remember how I said that the offer was already at the very bottom of our acceptable range? Well, we weren't very willing to shell out another $1500+. But we also weren't very willing to lose the sale. We considered offering a $750 credit instead, but decided to go ahead and give them the full $1500 just to make the sale. The closer we got to April 30th, the more we realized there was no way we were going to close on time since the loan was still in underwriting. We didn't end up closing until June 6th. To compensate for the late closing, we asked the buyers to forfeit the repair credit. They agreed to lower it to $1000. Brett also covered the cost of the a/c repair ($450) out of his commission. At the end of a very long 8.5 months, we finally signed the papers and closed on the sale of our house. Despite the fact that we had done anything and everything we could do to aid in the process of selling the house (including carrying the house and all it's expenses for an extra month and half past the end of his contract, accepting an offer that was lower than our comfort range, and granting a repair credit for a house that was supposed to be sold "as is"), we still walked away from the sale with less money than our real estate agent. The money that we "made" on the sale wasn't even enough to cover the expenses of owning the house for the 8.5 months it was on the market. I'm very thankful that we sold the house, and I'm trying not to be a spoiled, ungrateful brat. But I can't help feeling a little jilted that my agent made more than I did on the sale of my house.