PRESTIGE PROPERTIES REALTY

Description of Work: I hired Leslie Chatham at Prestige Properties Realty to be my real estate agent for a rental property I wanted to sell. It was important to pick a good agent as I lived four hours away and we were going into the slow time of year in a declining economy. Leslie was always up beat and was able to marshal a pretty good set of people to help me get the house ready. As Leslie, would probably tell you, I was a stickler on details and checking references. We negotiated a detailed listing agreement and marketing plan where we both made certain commitments and agreed to track them. I'm sure Leslie was a little nervous about it. We had to make some changes to our agreement once her husband and partner read it over but they were not unreasonable so I agreed. The agreement laid out a marketing plan with specific actions and deliverables with due dates. The listing agreement we negotiated was at 6% with a declining fee if we didn't get a contract within 60 days. Having listed the house before and not having much happen, I wasn't about to repeat that experience again. The default listing agreements don't commit the realtor to do hardly anything. Our agreement called for Leslie to give me weekly written status updates. They may not have been as detailed as I was hoping but she stuck to our agreement. My expectations may have been higher than most sellers. She also helped significantly in getting people lined up to do the work and helped some in staying after them when there were problems and issues. Living four hours away it was essential to have a realtor who knew people that could do things on a timely basis. She was always willing to meet someone at the house to do the work and let me know how it was going. We did around $30,000 in repairs to get the house ready so having a good realtor that could manage the work was essential. She told me she could do this and the other realtor I spoke with was luke-warm on this so I chose Leslie. I'm glad I did. One other thing about Leslie is she seems to limit her listings to no more than ten and specializes in out-of-town owners. I think this helped in that she was only a listing agent and had the time and motivation to do what was needed to get my property in good showing condition and made sure it got the proper exposure. I also changed the wording in the standard listing agreement to minimize my chances of being in breech. There are very little protections in the listing agreement for the seller. I asked for and she agreed on notice and escalation procedures to be followed before either of us could be in breech. Furthermore, we changed the agreement so that either one of us could walk away without penalty.