My realtor has presented an offer $5K below asking price, and did some ping pong back and forth with the buyer. I decided I do not want to sell my property at this time (3 MFH). How can I tell my realtor? I just want to hold onto the property. I love being a landlord.

I would not mention you dont want to sell unless you are willing to pay the commission.

Tonia ... I would be honest because if you aren't then all you are going to get is a bill from them. Don't lead them on. I know so many on here dislike Real Estate agents but they are spending their money on marketing your property, showing it, dealing with customers, clients, agents, etc. If you are no longer interested in selling then pull it. NOW. Many times people end up changing their minds about selling (and buying) but you are in a contract. Most likely it states "here is my commission price to sell the property" but it also may state that if you pull the listing from them they can bill you their costs and/or the full commission (sometimes with or without a buyer but if they did bring you one that is "feasible" then you could be on the hook). So many sellers feel that they are the ones that are losing out and the agent does nothing for them but that doesn't mean that the agent isn't. IF you received a full price offer would you have accepted it? IF not then you need to tell them ASAP to pull the listing because you are not selling any longer.

If you are ticked off about the fact that they presented you with an offer of $5k lower than asking price well, I'm surprised (depending on the price) but that really may not be that bad AND by law (at least in NYS) they HAVE to present ANY AND ALL OFFERS. Even the low ball ones that they know will not go anywhere but tick off the owner. Many times we just state "don't bother writing it up, just tell me the rest of your contingencies for that offer and I'll wing it past the seller for you".

Why did you list it for sale in the first place?

Technically the propery is off market and listing removed a couple of weeks ago. I decided to remove listing due to everything going on. I did recheck in with my agent on another property and she said buyer was still interested so I re-reviewed

"How can I tell my realtor?"

I had a realtor that I purchased 7 homes thru. When it was time to sell one of them, she instructed me on what upgrades I needed to do to sell quickly. Within 1 week I had completed all tasks and signed the listing agreement.

Then came the bad news. The realtor was going on her annual vacation for 10 days and would have her assistant handle all inquiries.

I had paid $80,000 for the home during this up cycle and the comps were around $120,000. My loan balance was around $60,000. I owned the home for 5 years.

I got a call a week later that an offer came in. So I asked the realtor assistant how much it was since I didn't want to drive 2 hours for nothing. The realtor said, "This is a good offer, you have to come into the office"! So I drove to meet with my agent's assistant.

As I said the house was worth every penny at $120,000 and I had paid $80,000 5 years before for it. So the offer was, $68,000. That's $12,000 less than I paid for the property. Over $50,000 less than it's market value. I as pissed.

My agent came back home and I agreed to allow her to continue the listing. Then 3 weeks later the agent said she's going on another trip and her assistant was going to handle things.

I said no way. I'm taking the house off of the market and I'll have it rented before you get back from your trip.

If there is no current listing agreement in place, just tell the agent that you are not going to sell at this time.

If there is a current listing agreement in place and you tell the agent that you are withdrawing the property, you could find that the agent is entitled to a commission based on the listing price. After all, your withdrawing the listing is usually a breach of the listing agreement.

Many times, a broker will waive this, on the understanding that when you decide to re-list, you will give him/her the new listing. A client of mine who withdrew a listing once reimbursed the broker for advertising costs and some other costs that the broker had incurred in marketing the property, and everyone was happy.

Richard's idea that you can raise the price substantially is wrong. You have a contract with the broker to pay a commission is the broker finds a buyer ready, willing and able to buy the property at the listing price. That price is written down on paper. You don't have to sell at that price, but you have to pay a commission if the broker finds such a buyer.

As for the listing expiring and someone still wanting to make an offer -

I sold several properties these past few months. All but one sold for my price and sold quickly. I only listed them for 30 days because I knew these were all going to investors and if they didn't sell in 30 days, they weren't going to sell. With one, the listing was set to expire on a Monday and it hadn't sold. Thursday evening an overabundance of requests for showings came through for the next few days - some for Monday and Tuesday. This was a multi unit and my tenants had all been very kind and patient with the showings. I told my realtor to tell the other realtors that they could schedule, however, they could not present me with anything less than full price, cash offers. I didn't want a bunch of folks trapsing through bothering my tenants and then attempting to low ball me (because I wasn't going to sell at anything less than full price). Only two actually scheduled showings and one of them stood the realtor up. So coming in last minute or after a listing expires, apparently is something that happens.

If your property is off-market, this really doesn't apply to you, but I heard from my agent many years ago about a couple who posted their home for sale...many times.

Every year or two for several years, they would have an agent try to sell their home. Then, each time, they would get an offer to purchase. But every time they received an offer, they would get cold feet and kill the deal.

O... I'll take a shot at answering that ?.

1) Over 80% of real estate sales include an agent. The majority of buyers "price in" the agent's fee, and if you try to sell it yourself to save the 6% commission, the Buyer will know this and will discount their offer. So you maybe end up saving only 3% because the Buyer will expect you to "share" your savings with them.

2) Being a good real estate investor doesn't mean you have your finger on the precise temperature of the market. Things can move fairly quickly if you live in a hot market, and if you do not have current, accurate comps you could end up under pricing your home. That almost happened to us when we sold our personal residence in 2018. You'd think that I, as a 13-years veteran real estate investor and a guy who lived in the neighborhood would know how to properly price my house! We listed at what I thought was a very reasonable price given comps of actual sales on Zillow (not Zestimates...the few actual sales prices listed from our hood). No serious offers...everyone was tossing low balls at us. I tried it with a high octane agent--he sells 400+ homes per year for the past decade--and we sold within 3 weeks and after covering his fee we still came out $6,000 more net profit in our pocket. I had way undershot the market and the offers reflected that.

3) Underpricing or overpricing means you can linger for a long time on the market and not get your price. Keep in mind that if you miss your market by just 5% too low, you've already lost more than the agent would cost you. If your listing grows stale (priced too high), Buyers are more likely to low ball.

I used a realtor to sell my properties because I couldn't be bothered with the phone calls, scheduling and showing of the places.

Ken I'm crazy for the RE title and ALL it entails.