Expert: Dottie Worthington - 7/26/2007

Question
Hi, well i live in a great town first of all where houses go on the market and sell very quickly. so after having our child we decided that we wanted to sell and move to a bigger house with more land. so we called a realtor and she came over and looked at our house and showed us some comps for the area. our house is the biggest house in the area we live (sq. ft.) and she told us how much we should put it on the market for. so we were like okay if other houses smaller are selling for that much we should list it for the price she stated. well its been a month and she hasnt given us anything, no phone calls no emails nothing and we would like to sell our house cause we have found a few we are interested in but she told us we cant put a bid on one if we already have our house on the market. so we are stuck cause our house isnt overpriced for the area, and we want to start looking at other houses. can we fire her cause she isnt letting us know anything??

Answer
I was unclear in your message if you had signed a listing contract with this Realtor. If you have then that is a binding contract, but she could let you out of it at her or her broker's discretion. You can look at new homes all you want, you will just need to make your offer contingent upon the sale of yours. You can use a different Realtor to look at homes if you like, unless you also signed a buyers rep agreement with that Realtor. Also, if things are selling that fast in your area and your house is not overpriced, then it would have sold in a month if the average selling time is less than 30 days, unless there is another problem. When buying it is better to be under than over the sq ft average for the neighborhood.