Joseph Milazzo

The realtor offered to help me with my short sale. He was working on another short sale for my mother's neighbor's home when I met him. He agreed to take my property on for a short sale transaction, although it was in a neighborhood far from the area he usually worked in. He explained that with the economic downturn, realtors had to work much harder to earn the commissions they used to earn. He was willing to "hustle," so to speak, to earn the commission from a smaller priced sale. My property was a townhome and my mom's neighbor's home was a large single-family home in a nicer neighborhood. While he probably meant to help me out, there were several pieces of the transaction which seemed less professional than my expectations. He kept telling me that the Arizona Deficiency Clause would give me protection against the lender trying to recover the difference on the original loan. After the sale was completed, I found out that that clause only protects people whose properties go into foreclosure. This may have been a misunderstanding, but it didn't give me confidence in his professional knowledge. The final transactions on the sale were what made want to make a report here. After the closing documents were signed, I sent an e-maile to ask where to leave my copies of the house keys. In fact, I asked the Title company's agent about the keys, as this had not yet been addressed. The realtor replied and told me to leave them inside the lockbox on the front door (I had the combination for it). This seemed like a lazy way to handle the transfer of the keys. I had to drive out of my way back to the property to leave those keys there. It was a painful experience, as I had fallen prey to the economic downturn and lost my good-paying job over 2 years prior. I did not want to return to the property. The second item that made me feel things were handled unprofessionally was that the realtor sent me a text over 10 days after the closing, asking for the mailbox number. I had left the mailbox keys inside the house before vacating it. This kind of information should have been addressed earlier, in my opinion. It made me feel as though he had dropped the ball and had decided he was already done with the deal. He was only asking because he'd failed to cover the matter of the keys early on and the new owner needed that information.