Assist-2-Sell New Realty Inc

We listed our home for sale with Assist 2 Sell - New Realty on March 1, 2010. Mark Shank is the broker of this agency. Larry Kimmich was our listing agent. During the 3 months our home was on the market with this agency they couldn't provide us with even 1 prospective buyer. They pretty much advertised our property and left it up to other agencies to provide the buyers. We dropped the price of our property by $21k to attract buyers but all we could get was 1 showing a month from other agencies. Larry would give us updates from time to time but he never appeared to be actively selling our home to prospective buyers. By June 1 my husband had returned from his deployment and it was time for us to move to our next duty station. We were seeking help from anybody that could recommend to us a hard-working real estate agent. We finally found one but we had to get out of our contract with Assist 2 Sell first. Mark Shank refused to let us out of the contract unless we paid him a break fee of $250.00. We protested that because he and Larry couldn't even provide us with 1 prospective buyer to even view the home. Mark wanted nothing to so with us and would avoid our phone calls until he was paid the $250. We opened an investigation with the Texas Real Estate Commission and Army Community Service at Ft. Bliss that is still ongoing. We had to pay the $250 so our new agent could list us on the MLS, but we are in no way done with Mark Shank. This has created a hardship for our family because my husband has already had to go to his next duty station while I stay behind to give our house one last chance to sell with our new agent. A rep with the commission called Mark to see if he would just let us out without a fee and he said "no" and that he "really didn't care if this was causing a hardship for our family." I can not, in all honesty, reccommend this particular office of Assist2Sell because they couldn't even perform the basic functions of a real estate agent in bringing us buyers. It is a real shame that we had to pay to get out of a contract that wasn't being upheld on the other end. Please look elsewhere for a real estate agent.