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| - I've been on the fence about hiring a real estate agent to sell my condo. Had heard so many horror stories about incompetent agents who don't return calls or follow through, all the way to pushy ones who manipulate you into accepting a bad deal. But then I read all the positive reviews for Angela Langtry and figured maybe there are some good apples in the heap.
A bit of background: Just 3 years earlier I had my place appraised by a licensed appraiser. I had also pulled statistics on how my particular neighborhood valuations had increased since I bought the place 10 years prior, and had scouted comparable listings from MLS and other databases. So I definitely had a ballpark idea of what listing price I wanted to aim for that was grounded in all the facts I could get my hands on. What I wanted from Ms. Langtry was expert help in defining the kind of buyer profiles we would aim for, and then presenting me with a clear marketing plan to efficiently reach those buyer profiles.
Long story short, after attempting to wow me with her statistics (top 1%, average selling at 96% of listing price, average selling time under 30 days), she jumped right in and recommended listing my place at a price point that was $15-20k less than the appraiser's valuation from 3 years prior. With a straight face.
To try to support her case, she had pulled a bunch of lowball comparables that had serious flaws or substantial differences from mine (i.e. had original wiring and plumbing, were way further from the metro, were old rental buildings without laundry in the unit, etc.)
I asked her a few followup questions, like "How much should my place be worth if I rented it out instead of selling?" Again, another ridiculous lowball figure that didn't seem to be based in any kind of facts or neighborhood averages. I asked her one other tactical question that I would have expected her to know the answer to, and she simply wasn't able to give me a clear response in the moment.
All of this left me with the impression that, at best, she just doesn't know her stuff, or at worst, was trying to pull the wool over my eyes. It made me wonder if she had delegated the pricing analysis to someone else on her team, and I also felt she did not know my neighbourhood at all. I suspect her laudable statistics are in part the result of duping or strong-arming homeowners into baking a huge discount into their prices. (Guess it's not too hard to sell something in under 30 days when it's ridiculously underpriced from the get-go!)
Perhaps she's more specialized at the buyer's agent side of things, but for selling a condo, look out for yourself carefully if you decide to work with this particular agent. YMMV.
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