Foxtons leaving the hudson valley

Hi, yes I guess people won't learn. We noticed a pattern that even though many properties in the area are still overprices, the foxtons ones were way over priced and not the best properties. I have a feeling people are going from them to the next cheapo one because they don't have the money to pay a real real estate agent.

As for the people who lost their jobs. I feel for them but I went through it myself in the 90s. Mass layoffs after busting your tail for a company. Two weeks severance if you were lucky and a box to take your stuff home in. Baby boomers had it very different when they were in their 20s and 30s. Now there is no company loyalty because employees are expendable. It's cheaper to outsource and to fire and rehire whenever a company takes a turn and employees don't 100% match the job anymore. Of course, mergers also affect layoffs.

What the foxtons people went through is no different than many other people. But anyone who has been through the lifecycle of a new business model could see it had serious flaws. It wasn't sustainable with the way they did business. The agents probably saw it coming for awhile.  Salaries, benefits, cars, laptops, cell phones, that's more than a lot of people get in any field. Imagine paying for all that and relying on slow moving listings to foot the bill.

My boyfriend and I made the mistake of listing our home with Foxtons.  Not because we couldn't afford to pay a 6% commission, but because a 6% commission is ridulous.  We have both sold our homes and our general experience is that the real estate agency doesn't do much more than list your house and maybe show it a couple of times.  If I had a way of getting my house listed on the MLS without a realtor I wouldn't have even hired them.

Anyway, we listed with Foxtons a little over a month ago.  I am having a hard time believing that this company had no idea where they were headed, yet still continued to take on listings.  Now, I feel, they are in breach of our contract, but I cannot reach anyone to get them to come remove their sign or get their lockbox off of my door.  It is really ridiculous the way this has all played out.

I hear what you are saying Tom, that's terrible. If I were you I would call your local real estate board and ask them how to proceed. They had to belong to the the local realtor board to get in MLS. 

As for your experience with realtors, I can tell you, I never got 6% in my life. And remember you split half of that with the other agency, and then half again with your brokerage house. Or they even get more. And a good realtor does do a lot.

First they act as marketing director, then once you have an offer you work as project manager to make sure all the bits and pieces go through. And you have to factor in all the people who list their homes then change their minds, turn down offers or whatever, and the realtor is stuck for the bill. They only get paid when a sale happens so that drives costs up.

And realtors don't get health insurance or reimbursed for the gas, phone, internet, etc. It's all out of pocket. You can drive people around for weeks looking at a house and then they change their minds, or sellers make you do tons of paperwork and they change their minds and stay put. You don't even get paid for the paper you handed them let alone the hours you spent researching market data and driving out to go over it with them in person.

People think they make a ton of money and do nothing but that's not true for most of them--even the really good ones. It is a lot of work and it doesn't always pay off. If people started paying realtors on an hourly rate the way they pay other professionals, then I bet the cost of using a realtor would be a lot less. And there would only be serious sellers and buyers in the market.

Good luck with the Foxtons mess. I think it's terrible what happened to the people that listed with them. But I was not surprised when it happened. Not in the least. Hope you get some resolution soon.