GANNON REAL ESTATE

Initially, Tom seemed like he knew what he was doing. He priced the house properly. We got one offer on it two weeks after putting it on the market (in a down market). He responded promptly to any calls or e-mails from us. He was on time for any meetings with us. The house was in need of some work before it would be market ready. Tom told us to put the house on the market 'as is,' but he told us to fix the pool, have the wood floors refinished and the exterior painted. We also had to have the chimney repointed. ... but there was mold in the basement that he told us not to worry about ... He told us not to spend more than $5,000 on improvements/repairs to the house before putting it on the market. Just completing the work he suggested ended up costing us well over $9,000. ($3,000 for exterior painting, $1,800 for the floors, $1,600 for the chimney, $2,900 for the pool -- and we did shop around.) Our real problem with Tom stems from issues with the buyer's financing. The buyer had an issue with a portion of her down payment. Two days before we were due to close, the bank told her that the money had not been in her possession long enough and that it needed to "season" for 60 days. Tom didn't want to wait 60 days for this. He wanted to put the house back on the market to see if we could rush a new buyer into closing. He made his suggestion the same day we found out about the financing problem. The buyer was fine with the mold in the basement and because of that, we felt that it was better to work with her than to chance putting the house on the market. Our lawyer agreed with us. If we had listened to Tom, we would have lost the sale on our father's house and we would have lost that deposit. Tom is a nice enough guy, and he can price a house to sell, but watch out when he starts to get creative. I'm glad we consulted our lawyer as much as we did. Don't sign anything Tom gives you unless you have your lawyer look at it first and don't take his advice about working on the property.