Realtors guarantee sale of couple’s home but don’t deliver
05:45 PM Mountain Standard Time on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
By Bart Treece / 3 On Your Side producer
In this slow real estate market, some Realtors are coming up with innovative ideas, but not all of them work.
It has to do with something called the Guaranteed Sale Program. But one Valley couple selling their home found out a guarantee is really not a guarantee at all.
“I don’t know if it’s a TV legal term, but I got hosed,” Brandon Love said.
That about sums up Love’s experience with an innovative concept in real estate called the Guaranteed Sale Program.”
It sounded like a great idea because Love and his wife, Holly, were trying to sell their Phoenix home and upgrade to a bigger home at the same time.
“We realized our old house was much too small,” he said.
To make the move, Love used the Guaranteed Sale Program offered by real estate agents Gary and Caryn Shannon of Keller Williams Realty Southeast Valley.
According to the deal, if the Shannons couldn’t sell the couple’s home in three months, they would buy it.
Because the sale was “guaranteed,” the Loves thought it was a no-brainer.
“At the time, I’m signing this contract, thinking it’s too good to be true,” Brandon Love said.
As part of the “guaranteed” deal, the couple had to buy a new KB home, which they did in Surprise. They even moved in.
“We love it when you walk in the door,” Love said. “It’s wide open.”
But three months came and went with no contract on their existing home. As a result, Love says he and his wife became concerned the Shannons were not going to follow through with their Guaranteed Sale Program.
However, they were reassured when one of their agents left this phone message: “Hi, this is Caryn Shannon over at Keller Williams. We are still planning to move forward with that Guaranteed Sale Program on your home. It’s the right thing to do.”
But after that optimistic message, Love says they received a letter from an attorney, saying the Shannons were “no longer in a position to buy their home.”
In other words, forget that contract the Loves signed, forget the fact the fact they already moved, and forget that so-called guarantee.
All of a sudden it doesn’t matter, meaning the couple are now stuck paying two mortgages.
Nice guarantee.
“Every month it costs me a big chunk of my money,” Love said.
3 On Your Side contacted Keller Williams and the Shannon team for answers.
Instead, an attorney contacted us and confirmed that the Shannons will not buy the Loves’ home despite that guarantee.
Regardless, the Loves aren’t happy they’re in this mess and are disappointed nobody has stepped up to make it right.
“I haven’t gotten a ‘my bad’ or an apology,” Love said. “I don’t think it’s right, fair aside.”
One option right now for the Loves is to file a lawsuit against their Realtors and they are considering it.
By the way, the contract is with the Realtors only. KB Homes and Keller Williams, as far as we can tell, are really not to blame.
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I am a Keller Williams agent in the Birmingham, AL market, and I just wanted to respond to this article. The Guaranteed Sale program is certainly not a Keller Williams program. Each Realtor is able to come up with special programs that might be appealing to home buyers and sellers. Keller Williams is an outstanding company with a high priority on moral business practices. I know several agents in our area who advertise a $1,000 guarantee if your house doesn’t sell within a certain time period. The most prominent of these is a ReMax agent. This agent used to advertise a guarantee program like the one described in the attached article. The key to any program offered by a real estate agent is to be sure that the agent can back it up. Ask for referrals from prior clients or talk to the agent’s broker to be sure that the agent is on the up-and-up.
My real estate team offers a buyer guarantee and a satisfaction guarantee to our seller clients. We never offer anything that we will not back up. Our reputation is our business, and we can’t afford to harm that. You can check out our web site for more information about our programs: www.MegaAgentRealEstate.com.