Prudential Utah Elite

We contacted the Prudential Utah Elite Orem agency broker and owner in December 2011 regarding our interest in listing our high-end house. The house had been on the market with a boutique realtor for six months and hadn't sold. We felt that listing with a nationally known firm would increase our chances of selling the house. One particular interest was in their relocation services to tap into a large high-tech buyer's market moving into the area. Their initial story sounded good. We even had a phone call from their relocation specialist telling us all the wonderful things they could do. We told the broker that we wanted an agent who could work closely with the wife for a variety of reasons. There was also a requirement that the agent would have to keep an eye on the house, particularly visiting after showings, as we were part time dwellers. The broker assigned a top-notch agent, Chris Nichols, who was well-connected within the community. He met with us for the typical marketing meeting. The marketing literature he brought along was tailored to our house and bound in a nice, spiral notebook. We didn't hold back any of our requirements from Chris, including the need to visit the house after showings. Over the following six months the relationship we had with Chris declined. At times it was hard to get in touch with him. He whined frequently that the wife didn't trust him when she asked questions about marketing deliverables from his own brochure. There was one instance when we arrived at the house for one of our stays that we noticed the flyer box in the front yard was loaded with dull-looking black and white flyers. This was for a high-end house, and definitely not in line with Prudential's own marketing literature. When asked about it, Chris complained that it's a waste of money producing nice color flyers when the kids in the neighborhood just take off with them. When urged to comply with their marketing plan he delivered the color brochures. Even though Chris indicated at the beginning of our agreement with him that the house would likely sell for around $499,900 we had a starting asking price of $530,000. There was lots of interest at that time. We lowered the price once to the lower 500's -- no increased number of showings. When we lowered the asking price to $499,900 at Chris' urging there was no increase in the number of showings. At about the same time Chris whined at the wife and told her that he would like to get rid of the listing through a fast sale because for every one listing at our price he could easily sell 2 or 3 other houses at lower prices. There were a few, basic things that Chris could have done to increase the odds of making the house more appealing during showings. Why he never came by to turn on the lights when a qualified buyer was about to be shown the house -- we never could understand why he never did that, especially when his own residence was less than a mile away. The house eventually sold at $475,000. We had an independent appraisal done prior to this, and the appraised price was higher than what we sold it for. We felt tremendous pressure from Chris to accept the buyer's lowball price just to get rid of the house, in spite of our directive when the price was at $499,900 that we felt uncomfortable with such a lowball asking price. We were finally happy that we at least could get rid of the bad, sour relationship we'd developed with the entire Prudential Utah organization. Back to the relocation services marketing commitment -- we never heard back from the person who sold us on what services they could provide. When wife asked Chris for some evidence the house had been marketed through this service he was offended that we were even asking about it. He made numerous comments over the months the house was listed through him that we just didn't trust him. It's been over a month since our sale closed, and we decided to let things cool off for 30 days before gathering our thoughts to put a review in Angie's list about this horrible experience. There may be other agents at Prudential Utah Elite that are better than Chris, but given our experience we can't recommend this agency for real estate services. And that includes any Prudential agency throughout the country.