Your voice has a chance to be heard now! scamion.com - we bring changes together.

report scam

Simple Choice Realty


Country United States
State Alabama
Phone 610-572-7347
Website https://www.simplechoicerealty.com

Simple Choice Realty Reviews

Most Useful Comment
  • Oct 4, 2019

August 2019 Disappointing 2 weeks

I DO NOT recommend Simple Choice Realty if you want to sell your home for sale by owner and want people to KNOW it is for sale by owner. It was not at all what I thought I was signing up for. As soon as I pulled my home from Chris Carr of Simple Choice Realty and listed with a great agent at a much higher price, I had 9 families at a Labor Day Sunday open house (realtor said it was the best open house all summer), 10 other showings, 3 offers and a contract in less than 1 week. The key is to list your home with a regular realtor who will MARKET your home. I asked Chris Carr to pull the listing in two weeks. The reason I asked him to pull it- is it took me those two weeks to figure out people did not know it was for sale by owner and I did not like the way it was sounding how they all have to go thru him. I thought he was out of it once he listed it. I have 3 kids and work full time and when I did have free time during those two weeks, I kept trying to figure it out. If it was written anywhere, it was hidden in the realtor notes to other realtors that many don't even look at. In order for someone who was not working with a realtor to look at my home, they had to contact him. (He says he does not then become the buyers agent.) In order for other realtors to look at the home, they have to contact him also. (He says he does not get a cut from them.) Not one person contacted me during those two weeks. My home was clean, beautiful, staged well, located in a sought after neighborhood, and showed well. Any feedback was really good of anyone who ever saw my home. He would not refund the approx $300 paid to him. I did not get one call or showing while he had it listed and explained that I completely misunderstood what he was doing. I told him I would not write a bad review if he refunded the money since that would show me he was sincere and not corrupt. He twisted it around and accused me of threatening him - not really. So here's my review. I was telling the truth and he knew it and if he stood by his product, he would have refunded the money. I honestly DO NOT RECOMMEND him. I think it says a lot about him. He said he would just write a rebuttal. Well go at it. As soon as my listing was removed from the MLS by him, I got flooded with calls from regular realtors. I explained to them I had listed with Simple Choice flat fee listing and EVERY SINGLE ONE of those realtors that I spoke to said they don't bother with flat fee listing realtors and wonder about the honesty of it. They all said the same thing. As nice as my home was, it just does not make sense that I did not get one call during those 2 weeks he had it listed. Do other realtors or as many realtors want to even deal with him? Do people want to have to call an agent when they are looking to buy a home for sale by owner and get it cheaper? He wasted my time, stressed me out more, and I don't appreciate the arrogance. The right thing for him to do would have been to refund the money. Do yourself a favor and interview regular real estate agents and pick the one that will MARKET your home. You will make out better in the long-run and probably wind up with more money in your pocket. I sincerely wish everyone good luck with selling your homes.

Mark as Useful [1 vote]
  • Feb 24, 2018

After a disappointing 6 months of lackluster performance by Berkshire Hathaway realtor Jack Lacey, we decided to try selling our house ourselves. We searched online for a service that would help get the word out for us. Simple Choice Realty advertises a service to place your listing on the MLS to do that for a flat fee. Sounds good, right?

After some weeks of listing and actually getting qualified and interested buyers, we wanted to update our Zillow listing because it didn't reflect "For Sale By Owner" clearly enough.

At this point, we found that Zillow locks your entry when an agent puts your listing on the MLS. In this case, the "agent" was Chris Carr of Simple Choice Realty. Looking at our entry on Zillow, he's listed as the first contact and the listing "agent"! So only he can make changes to the listing! Zillow though takes their info from the MLS listing! Well, guess what? The MLS does not "allow" him to put "For Sale By Owner" in the listing!

WTF? So Chris Carr is selling a service that locks you out of your own listing, and puts him first on the contact list, so he get to be the "buyer's agent" and get his minimum required 2%.

After discussions with him, we decided we had to terminate his service because he could not make it clear on Zillow that we were selling the house ourselves and no buyers agents were necessary, although not prohibited. He refused to refund the extra fee we paid for him to review any agreements of sale we received.

If you want to sell your place yourself, DO NOT USE THE MLS or ANY AGENT WHO USES IT! You will lose money if you do.

  • Mar 7, 2019

Reply from Owner

To be perfectly honest, I am not sure why Tom Bates of Richboro, PA even took the time to file this complaint. He clearly states that he received qualified and interested buyers while listed with us. That’s the goal, right?

The foundation of Mr. Bates’ complaint is that we could not post the term “For Sale By Owner” on his listing. MLS rules do not permit us to do so. Furthermore, our website makes no mention of the term “For Sale By Owner” because we are NOT a For Sale By Owner company. My company is a licensed real estate brokerage in PA, DE, and MD. We offer to list sellers’ homes on the Realtor’s MLS (Multiple Listing Service) for a flat fee. As a result, the MLS does forward those listings to other websites like realtor.com, Zillow, Trulia and many others. This is stated on our website. Also, when listing on the MLS, we (as a licensed brokerage) are required to follow the MLS rules. So I am sorry we can’t post the language “For Sale By Owner” on our listings.

Mr. Bates mentioned something about our company receiving a 2% commission. Unfortunately, he is either confused or intentionally lying. We do not accept a commission. The commission our sellers offer is paid to the buyer’s agent (any agent that brings a buyer). And what Mr. Bates failed to explain is the fact that we forward any and all buyer internet leads to our customers (the home seller). I have listed thousands of homes over many years and I have never claimed an internet buyer lead as my own and taken the % commission my seller was offering to a buyer’s agent. I can say that we have forwarded tens os thousands of buyer leads to our customers. *It should be noted that often times, websites like Zillow do not even forward me the buyer leads. They sell these leads to other agents who pay to receive leads. But this is their business model and not something I can control. It has nothing to do with me, my company, or the promises and offerings we make to our customers.

Mr. Bates stated that he decided to terminate his listing with us because we could not make it clear on Zillow that he was a For Sale By Owner. What Mr. Bates fails to mention is that we were in the process of trying to help accommodate what he wanted. For many customers in the past we have asked Zillow to block the listing data being sent by the MLS so that our customer can create and manage their own listing on Zillow. Zillow has always accommodated us with this request in the past (although it can take a few days). We submitted this request to Zillow (and Mr. Bates is well aware of our submission of this request to Zillow). The first response we received from a Zillow rep said he was unable to do this. Knowing they have done this for me many times in the past), I submitted another request to try to keep Mr. Bates happy. Unfortunately he decided to terminate his listing before we could accommodate his request. *I should also state that Zillow makes their own rules and has the right to change those rules at any time. So it is possible that at some point Zillow will not allow sellers to post their own listings if that same listing is also on the MLS. But up until now, Zillow has accommodated this for our past customers.

It should also be pointed out that Mr. Bates told me over the phone he was very appreciative of the help and support I gave him with an offer he received. It was not until he asked for a refund that was not granted that he decided to try to defame my company on this website. I did not grant him a refund for 2 reasons. (1) Once a home is listed on the MLS our fee is earned and no refunds are granted. This is in our listing contract. (2) His package also included a contract review. He did receive an offer and that offer was reviewed by me and I spent a lot of time working with Mr. Bates with regards to that offer. In fact, I spent more time with Mr. Bates than the average seller because Mr. Bates’ offer was brought to him from a buyer through an agent. Unfortunately, Mr. Bates and his potential buyer tried to circumvent that buyer agent to avoid paying him a commission. This created a tumultuous situation between those 3 parties. I went as far as trying to help mediate the whole situation between Mr. Bates, his buyer, and his buyer’s agent to try to help them come to an agreement that would work for all parties. The whole goal is to get the house sold, but sometimes greed gets people’s way of seeing the big picture. Anyway, I am certain I earned my flat fee which included a contract review.

The one statement where I can 100% completely agree with Mr. Bates is the fact that if you want to sell your home yourself (with no agents at all involved), do not list it on the MLS. The MLS is “NOT” and For Sale By Owner tool. The MLS is a tool for real estate professionals to advertise their listings and offer cooperating compensation to other real estate agents for bringing qualified buyers that result in a sale. Our program provides home sellers the ability to gain that massive exposure of the MLS for a low flat fee. Our customers then offer a % commission to any agent that brings them a buyer that results in a sale. Most of our sellers offer between 2% and 3% to the buyer’s agent that brings them a buyer. And, if our sellers find a buyer without an agent as a result of their own marketing efforts, they can sell to that buyer directly without paying any commissions. It is actually a really great program. Unfortunately, 1 out of approximately every 500 or so customers disagrees. You can't please everyone! To read the reviews of the many customers that loved our service, please feel free to check out our website.

I am sorry for such a long rebuttal, but when you own a company and put everything you have into that company and when you are an honest fair person, when someone makes unfair accusations against you, you take that personally and feel the need to defend yourself. If you have specific questions about this frivolous complaint OR if you have general questions about our service, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks!


Chris Carr

Broker/Owner of Simple Choice Realty

Write a Review about Simple Choice Realty