Josh Zuehlke - Coldwell Banker Burnet

Our initial experience with Josh was similar to the other reviewers here. He works hard, and is quite good at making you think he knows what he's doing. He loves to talk confidently about renovations. But in just a few months of homeownership, speaking with numerous neighbors and contractors, I’ve said/heard “I can’t believe Josh said…” more times than I could have imagined. I mean basics—hazards, long-standing regulations, etc. An agent doesn’t need to be a home repair expert, but don’t pretend to be one. He often expressed his ideas about what he thought was best for us, while dismissing our concerns, which I was embarrassingly naive enough to treat as expertise. This is a bigger pattern: He made unnecessarily big promises about helping with insurance, and then dropped the ball, leaving us scrambling. Then, when an issue arose after our needlessly-rushed closing, (an issue I never would have overlooked but for the insurance stress,) he wouldn’t pick up the phone—for three. whole. months. Once he’s been paid, his true priorities show. It took a direct call to Coldwell Banker to get a response—of half-baked excuses and grade A condescension. Another time, he told me the inspection would cost “$400-500”—it was $1,025. He’s worked with the same inspector for 20 years, and the prices are fixed. Later, during contingency, he made several shockingly unprofessional miscommunications with the seller that caused tremendous stress, both for him and us. He was utmost generous in his offers to handle the potential fallout, but it’s a situation that by all accounts shouldn’t have happened. I don’t think he has any ill intent. I’m sure he thinks he’s being thorough and fair. And this is not buyers remorse—we will have a great house here, in spite of not because of Josh. But buyer beware.

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He is an outstanding real estate agent. He was attentive to our preferences, he is very experienced with executive relocation, and is used to working with clients that don't live in that area. If anyone is moving to the Twin Cities area, we highly recommend him!

She is very bright, competent, smart, and throrough. She made everything very easy by going that extra mile.

Our request was routed to John Wanninger. We scheduled a meeting in early evening for him to look at the house. On the phone, he was pleasant and stated that he was familiar with the area. For the actual meeting, he arrived 30 minutes late. When my husband answered the door, he offered no apology for the tardiness. He breezed through the house in 10 minutes and said he would get back to us with a market analysis. Instead, I received a brief email stating that he was not the realtor for us. The overall impression he left was very negative. My guess is that he was not familiar with the area and believed that we lived in a nearby upscale neighborhood, rather than being a smaller house around the median price for Minneapolis.

I fired them sometime in November. I just felt like they kept wanting to lower the price of my home. In the entire time we were with them only 4 people came through my home. I got feedback from one. They said we could rent it out instead of selling but we really wanted to sell it because we wanted to buy a new home. Then they said we could do a short sale which would ruin my credit and I've spent my whole life building my credit just to ruin it and get you paid. I just felt I was working for them the whole time. They sent flyers to me one time or twice so that it was sitting in the house for people to view. They said they would advertise for me but I never saw them. Their pictures didn't do anything to compliment my home. I was very displeased with them. I would not recommend them. The impression I got from them is if its a great market or you have a perfect house then they'll do great. They wouldn't listen to me or respond to me so finally my husband had to call who is in our new house in Ohio to get them to take action.

The overall experience was good, in spite of all the routine tragedies (unrelated to our agent or Coldwell Banker Burnet) involved with the process of buying and selling houses. We sold our house in just over a month at 5% less than our original asking price, bought a house that we love at a fair price, and were able to move out/in quickly to accommodate the needs of our buyers. During our searching process, Sophie prescreened houses for us, and brought us to the ones she thought we might be interested in, which was a big time saver. The whole process was a whirlwind, and scary at different moments, but Sophie worked hard to keep things smooth. She professionally handled little difficulties our sellers presented with at closing, not allowing there to be any hitch in the process, or any significant cost to us. We had used Sophie once before, about eight years ago, and were satisfied enough then to rehire her this time around. We would do the same if we found ourselves needing to move again. The cost was set up in our contract -- 5% of sale price, if I recall correctly.

We chose not to use a real estate agent and do the research and set up appointments ourselves. This is very easy with the internet. We hired a lawyer to review the contract and attend the closing for $600. Around Minneapolis, the typical agent commission is around 3.3% for the seller's agent and 2.7% for the buyer's agent, but this varies depending on the housing market and location in the US. We reached an agreement on the price with the seller but the agent wanted a 5% commission. We complained and he lowered it to 4.5% but this still added over $2,000 to the price of the property. We found it amazing an agent would claim a bonus when we did all the work!! In addition, the agent forgot to tell the seller to have a city inspection which delayed the closing and added a lot of stress to our lives. I would not recommend this company. We thought about backing out of the deal because of the excessive commission which simply padded their profit and inflates housing prices.