Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Dealing with a realtor?

[Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah (welcome]

RoseWind Cohousing, in Port Townsend, has existed now for over 25 years, so we 
sometimes have had resales. Sometimes the owners who are leaving have listed 
their place with a realtor, resulting in a parade of other realtors coming 
through with their clients to see the house. For many realtors, the bottom line 
is to make a sale, make their commission, and move on to the next client. So 
they are often not big on explaining the cohousing community aspect. 

What I have done, in our sellf defense (as I often represent RoseWind as 
contact person here), is to write up a one-page explanation of what the 
community is, and entails, and how to learn more by visiting our web site and 
by contacting us to arrange for a tour and get questions answered. Then, when I 
have a chance, even a fleeting moment, with a visiting realtor and their 
client, I warmly greet them and simultaneously hand copies of this to both the 
realtor and the client. The realtor can hardly grab it out of the client's 
hand, so the info is thus transmitted. So the buyer gets to learn more, and 
knows how to contact us directly. And who knows, the piece may end up educating 
a realtor, which is helpful in general. 

Around here, a buyer's agent would only get a commission from the buyer, and a 
seller would have a choice of engaging someone as a seller's agent, via a 
contract signed with them. Sounds like this seller might do well to get clarity 
from a sympathetic local realtor or better-business bureau, as to what it 
requires, for her to owe a realtor anything, and what to do to clarify if she 
does not want to contract with someone as a seller's agent. 

Maraiah Lynn Nadeau
www.rosewind.org
where there's rarely any snow, and yesterday I worked in the garden in just a 
sweater, no jacket (and brought home an armload of carrots)