Real Estate Cafe

Instead of helping me find a house, Bill took up an enormous amount of my time to discuss his compensation. He refused to offer any service until a 'reasonable' fee structured had been negotiated. Even though I only asked for the standard fee structure that he offered on his website in his so called "menu of fees & rebates", he was not happy that I wanted to take his standard option and instead he insisted that I come up with an alternative fee structure that he could critique and negotiate with me on. He would not suggest what the alternative should be so rather than getting down to business as I would've preferred, we instead went back and forth for weeks with me offering up new fee structures and him rejecting each offer for small demands such as "weekends off". It was as if I was begging to give him my business and yet he insisted that we put his name down on all the open house registers because if we couldn't agree on an alternative structure he would then be willing to default to his standard fee arrangement should we be ready to place an offer in the meantime. So during this time I continued my own home search and attended open houses as he suggested with the understanding that when I found something on my own he would at least be able to help me through the buying process. He showed absolutely no sense of urgency in negotiations and never offered to help me research the market. When I did find something I was interested in placing an offer on I reached out to him asking for his services through the buying process as we had discussed. He replied by email stating that it was the weekend and he said he would not work weekends. I emailed him back asking him if he could just do a little research and get the seller's disclosures for us, and because it was the weekend I offered to double his normal hourly rate. He then called me and said I had now ruined his weekend for asking him to do this and not only would he not help me with this but he would not take any more calls or emails from me again. When I responded trying to explain that the house already had offers on it and I could not wait until after the weekend to submit a competing offer he began yelling and then hung up on me.

Working with Bell Wendel of The Real Estate Caf was a wonderful experience. He is a seasoned real estate professional with a wonderful new model to pay for his services which saved us a great deal of money. His website offers various payment options; we chose the fee-for-service route, which at the time was $100/hr., and a full rebate to us of the 2.5% commission from the sale, which was a $14,500 rebate. We were thrilled both with the rebate and the quality of his services. We ended up using 40 hours of his time, but a savvy shopper who has already identified the house they want to buy via Internet listings could probably go from offer to closing in 20-25 hours. Bill was also invaluable in the detailed pricing advice he gave us, and in helping us handle the roller-coaster emotional ups and downs of home-buying. His supportive, informed style, tactful communication with the seller's agent, and cool-headedness probably saved us another $30,000 off the offer price.