F C TUCKER CO INC REALTORS

You?d think that if you contracted with a Realtor to sell your home, the agents would act to protect your interests much like a buyer?s agent protects the buyer. We found that not quite so with F. C. Tucker agent Martha Smart and manager Tom Johnson on the south side of Indianapolis. In retrospect, we now perceive that Tucker was trying to increase their volume of sales at the expense of sellers. They applied endless verbal and written pressure to reduce our listing price, and they were our first obstacles to recovery from the 2008 recession even prior to seeing a buyer?s offer. First, Tucker agents used the lowest listing price ($217,000 with Tomorrow Realty) that we had during the 2008 housing recession against us to keep our Tucker 2013 listing price comparable to 2008. They further justified their suggestions with market research. Despite $25,000 in improvements since 2008, Tucker agents wholly ignored our improvements and admitted not even a penny of value towards a higher listing price than $217,000. Within three weeks of signing the listing contract at $218,000 (at our insistence), Martha requested that we lower our listing price even more to $205,000 and presented a contract amendment for that purpose to us. That meant that a total of $38,000 was discounted by our Tucker agents again prior to even seeing a buyer?s offer. Clearly, they were not working for us, and interestingly had we lowered the listing price to $205,000, we could expect that real estate agents like them would similarly use the even lower MLS listing against us far into the future making even partial recovery of the cost of our improvements impossible. The verbal pressure continued for about 8 more weeks before my comments to Tom Johnson were met, thankfully, with a mutual end of listing contract. Sellers in Southern Marion County, I think, are still caught in the 2008 recession despite the bright outlook portrayed by the industry in general in 2013. Had Tucker agents been forthright with us from the beginning, we would never have listed.