Cindy Matheson

The overall service with Cindy Matheson of John Stewart Walker Realty, was terrible. At first she seemed very upbeat and confident that she could sell our house, but had only excuses as time went on. We were told that the condition of our house was much better than most houses for sale in the area and the nicest house in our price category. Upon listing our house, we were promised multiple online sites as well as the MLS listing. Those sites did not list the house or listed it incompletely until our price reduction - a total of about 3 months. The house was shown multiple times, and an offer presented to us by Cindy for a "buyer" who was not prequalifed and we ended up negotiating with someone who had no money to purchase the house and who "disappeared" into the woodwork, presumably because they could not get a loan. When we had to move, we asked Cindy for advice on leaving the house staged or empty and were counciled that it should sell fine empty. BIG MISTAKE!!!! We later had to drive over 700 miles to stage part of the house because we kept getting comments from her that the people viewing it "didn't know where to eat"! Cindy's suggestion was to place a card table in the dining area of an otherwise empty house! Although we requested it, Cindy did not follow up weekly and we had to call her once a week to find out who viewed the house and how it went. Some people who looked at it were never followed up with at all. There was a major storm that passed through the area, knocking out power and downing trees. We learned from our neighbor that there was part of a tree down on one of our backyard sheds. He was kind enough to check on everything in the house for us and clean up the tree. When I called Cindy several days after the storm, she had not even checked on our house! That was HER listing and she knew we were living out-of-state!!! During all of this, Cindy showed the house to another couple twice. Again, we were not updated until she had shown it twice and was planning on a third showing. After 2 1/2 weeks of getting our hopes up, we found out that these people were not pre-qualified either and they apparently did not get qualified, as they stopped returning her calls. Upon the last phone call to Cindy, she had already planned another open house, which she failed to discuss with us, and asked for another price reduction. I refused, and asked her on the spot to release us from the listing agreement - 14 days early!!! She later agreed to withdraw the listing, but would NOT release us from the agreement. Instead of letting us get on with it and get our house listed with another realtor, we must wait for our contract with her to run out. Not much time, thankfully, but every day counts when the best selling months of the year did not produce a sale. After discussing the circumstances of contract release with other realtors - who said it was policy to release a client who no longer wanted their services - I can only conclude that we were not released from the contract out of vindictiveness. We are now waiting for the contract to expire (12 days to go!) so we can re-list with someone else. If you want your house sold in Lynchburg, VA, don't waste time with a realtor who will not exercise due dilligence with his/her services!