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5.0
Updated by user Jul 12, 2019

Issue has been resolved.

Original review posted by user Jul 11, 2019

We were in the process of attempting to purchase a new home through Nadine Bacon who is a Coldwell Banker agent. We agreed to work with Nadine Bacon (GA R.E.L.

378178) who showed us several homes. The problem didn't come into play until we actually found a house we wanted to purchase.

The one caveat was that we needed to sell our house at the same time as we were closing on our house. Our original plan was to go with Zillow Offers who were going to offer us a significant amount of money that would have been enough to cover our expenses, down payment, and allow us to have money for when we moved as we had previously had them send us an offer in April 2018. We were then told that Catalyst would get us the same offer or better and that we should work with them, through Nadine to sell our house.

We entered into a contingency clause with the seller to allow us to get our house sold and if we couldn't, we would be able to back out of the deal.

We then provided 4k in earnest money to secure our position.

On June 21st, the CataList offer came in significantly lower than what we received from Zillow back in April. There wouldn't have been any way for us to accept this offer. After Nadine apologized for the low CataList offer, we advised Nadine that we would reach out to Zillow immediately, and get them to come out and do their offer process again. However what we weren't told is that if weren't under contract to sell our house by June 28th, we'd forfeit our earnest money.

At no time did our agent give us a nudge to say we may need to terminate now to avoid losing the earnest money because we are under the gun. As stated above, we were under the impression that the contingency protected us. In fact, we were only advised to keep pushing forward with the Zillow process. At no point were we ever notified, or reminded, that we were up against a time clock.

At any rate, the Zillow offer also came in much lower than we needed, and we were ultimately forced to terminate the contract.

We were told by Nadine that we would get our earnest money back in up to ten business days as soon as the sellers signed off on the termination. This is all via text message on July 2nd.

I then got a call from Nadine on July 3rd from Nadine stating that the sellers were not going to sign because we were not under contract by July 28th. I said that would have been impossible because we were still waiting on Zillow to send us their evaluation. I also asked if there was something that we did wrong, Nadine advised that we did not do anything wrong, and that she was forwarding the matter to the legal department.

Again, she never stated that this was going to be an issue.

On July 8th, I got a call from Sheri Noles who is the branch manager for the Coldwell Banker office at 800 Whitlock Avenue, Marietta, GA 30064, not Nadine, who still hasn't reached out to us yet. During that call I was advised that we would not be getting our earnest money back, and that it was all laid out in the contracts we signed. It is now clear that ALL parties (myself, my husband, and our realtor) were not clear in terms of the contract, as otherwise we would have moved to terminate the contract, and not try to move forward with Zillow.

While we recognize it is up to the future homeowner to understand the terms and conditions of the contract, it is also up to our realtor to ensure that we don't get into situations like this. The realtor is supposed to guide the buyer, have their best interests in mind, and make sure that they are protected from costly mistakes.

If the contract was understood properly by the realtor, she would have given us a heads up that a crucial date was looming and that we needed to act accordingly. Which never happened.

As buyers we have to take responsibility for our ignorance, but a nudge from our realtor would have helped to prevent this costly learning experience. We are upset, disappointed, but more importantly hurt that Nadine Bacon still has not reached out to us after the fact. There have been no postcards, emails, or phone calls with any semblance or remorse for my husband and I losing money that we really didn't have to lose.

In fact, our entire house search has been hampered by this experience. At this point we are pretty sure we will not use Coldwell Banker again.

Reason of review: Poor customer service.

Preferred solution: Let the company propose a solution.

Location: 800 Whitlock Ave NW, Marietta, GA 30064

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Sorry, that complaint is too long to read in its entirety. Moses nailed it in 10 sentences.

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