Dwell Real Estate

Provider's poor service ultimately cost my family over $3,000 in lost earnest money, lost due diligence money and inspection fees. This is without factoring in time spent. My wife and I were directed to the provider via a mutual friend. We are first time homebuyers and had no prior experience with realtor services. Provider failed to furnish MLS listings or searches, forcing my wife and me to do most of the searching ourselves. What listings the provider did show of her own accord were uniformly in terrible condition and fundamentally unlivable. My wife and I assumed this was due to our low price range - we have since determined this was not the case, as there are numerous properties available in our area that are much higher quality. Additionally, provider was almost always tardy to showings and evinced little to no research into the properties being shown, beyond having printed out the MLS listing, from which she would read as we viewed the property. Upon finally finding and making an offer on a property, the realtor failed to properly advise us as to the various options we had in making the offer, e.g. delaying provision of earnest money until after the diligence period's expiration, or requesting the seller pay closing costs. The diligence period she advised us to outline in the offer was also utterly inadequate, given the age of the property we were dealing with. Upon receipt of the first inspection report, it was determined that there were extraordinary problems with the house. At this point the provider began to become difficult to reach, citing family concerns. I have no reason to doubt the family concerns, but given the problems with the house and the fact that we were initially inclined to withdraw our offer, it would have been appropriate for the provider to request additional time from the seller and, if failing to receive it, to terminate the contract. The provider instead advised us to provide a list of necessary repairs and to push for the contract to be renegotiated. Ultimately the contract was renegotiated, but the terms of the repairs were not spelled out in the renegotiation clearly. Additionally, another completely inadequate diligence period was specified. Costs for the re-inspection of the repairs were laid on us, as the buyers, and the sale was not made contingent upon a successful re-inspection. Furthermore, rather than filing an extension of diligence form, the contract was merely amended via an addendum, dramatically weakening its efficacy according to my current understanding and consultation with other agents. As I said, we are first time homebuyers, and at numerous points we asked the provider for advise and counsel regarding these and other issues. Her willingness to furnish said counsel was always lacking, as subsequent to our amended offer became nonexistent. It took four emails and two phone calls over a period of days to even determine that we were on the hook for closing costs, a matter she had not disclosed previously. At any time, had the provider indicated discomfort with our arrangement, or with her level of expertise in the property issues we were attempting to manage, we would have backed out of the deal, and saved ourselves thousands of dollars. Now we are still attempting to find a place to live, with very little time left on our current lease, and we've been hit with an effective $3,000+ total bill. I would not recommend the services of this provider to anyone under any circumstances.