Creig Northrop Team of Long & Foster Real Estate

Mr. Northrup was retained on February 7, 2014 to sell my home in Columbia, MD. During the past 5 months I have found the relationship to be difficult. His team does not communicate internally nor did they communicate with me on a regular basis. On July 22, 2014 I requested to terminate our relationship. In addition to the lack of communication, I was also concerned that the lawsuits pending against Mr. Northrup were hurting my ability to sell my home. Mr. Northrup agreed to terminate the relationship, but refused to cancel the contract without the 30 day notice clause (meaning I would need to wait 30 days before hiring another Agent). I find Mr. Northrup to have a cut throat way of doing business and do not recommend him or his firm. He is not an Agent that will form a good, positive, working relationship with a Seller.

Overall, great experience. The Northrop team we worded with (three people we worked with directly. One was the real estate agent, another the marketing coordinator (provided staging advice, coordinated professional photographer), and last handled actually listing house in MLS, Zillow, Redfin and coordinating closing. It was a little confusing at first figuring out who we worked with on what, but in the end it all worked. The staging advice was invaluable. We took the advice seriously and followed it to the nth degree. Fresh paint, clean carpeting, rest was mainly moving furniture and decluttering. There was a 7 month lag between the time we initially engaged the realtor and when we actually listed. The delay was the necessary because our new home is new construction - we didn't want to move out of our current house until new house was ready. The listing price ended up being 50K higher when we actually listed than what we had discussed 7 months prior (inventory in our zip code at our price point has been very lean). I really didn't think we'd get the listing price, but ended up with bidding war with 3 offers, and did get full listing price with no seller concessions. I have had some friends recently list their homes with a different realtor and I noticed a big difference in the quality of the pictures that were posted online compared with what the Northop team had done for our house - my friend's listing also did NOT get posted on either zillow or redfin.

The house sold within two days of listing it. They were excellent to work with and provided many services regarding the posting. They provided great follow-up and were very professional and attentive.