If you feel compelled to use them, make sure you interview the agent first and never use the one that I stumbled upon. Here are some examples of the agent's missteps that led to my losing out in a competitive bidding situation for a property on St. Pete Beach.



- My agent delivered to me a offer/contract template that was completely unacceptable to the selling agent indicating that my agent never had asked the simple question on how an offer was to be presented. After several days lost, I had to fill out a brand new offer/contract.

- During the counteroffering process (through which I remained patient), my agent gave me an incorrect counteroffer from the seller. The actual counteroffer was $3K less than their previous offer, but my agent said it was $7K less. Given how far apart we were at the time with the sales price, this was significant and caused me to provide another counteroffer that may have been less than ideal.

- There was another offer on the property (according to the selling agent that I had to discover myself, and only found out too late) that if I had known about, I would have alter/settled on a different counteroffer and sooner. This other offer was never communicated to me properly, which at several points in the process would have altered my actions. It seems clear now that my agent perhaps never had any substantial discussions with the selling agent on my behalf. I, however, in the last day before the contract was signed by the winning buyer, had three live discussions with the selling agent. In contrast, my agent always seemed "to get {the selling agents] voicemail" and "never [the selling agent] was returning my calls"

- My agent' provided several recommendations for financing, but they seemed to be brokers that were lacking in a proper portfolio of loan programs, compared to the other winning buyer's financing agents. Plus, the brokers that I did engage with had difficulty in understanding the special circumstances of this sale and the speed with which I was requesting they work. Both I and the winning buyer had to secure a special construction loan to make repairs. The winning buyer financing came through much sooner, but mine (I have top credit) was still outstanding as of this writing after four weeks of -- well, I do not really know what was happening over those four weeks.

- My agent recommended an inspector that I was able to be contact once and then never returned any phone calls (approximately 7 follow up calls) again.

- Please contact me if you want to know more.