Prudential Northwest Realty Associates

I’m in the market to sell my house and my wife’s boss caught wind of that and decided to refer Heather Schourup Hughes to me as an agent.
Normally, I don’t accept referrals preferring to make up my own mind however I considered the source of the referral and blindly accepted Heather as my agent.
See, the source in this case is a person who owns several pieces of property and buys and sells regularly. I made the assumption that Heather was HIS agent and she worked with him and it was a professional referral.
Turned out Heather was simply dating my wife’s boss. He found her in the casual encounters section of Craigslist, no joke. He never worked with her. I found out she’s only sold 3 houses in 2 years.
Great.
So, stuck with her for a month listing contract I tried to make the most of it. When showings took longer than the standard ’15 minutes and I don’t want it’ and got into the ‘maybe I’ll take it’ phase of potential buyers I would email her or text her and let her know that a showing went longer than expected so that she should follow up with the agent.
Unfortunately she doesn’t follow up with other agents. Doesn’t reach out at all, or if she does who knows? She is not big on communication. She waits for an offer passively and if it comes in she’s ready to agree to it and be done with you and the buyer pronto. Her answer to anything? «Lower the price».
If you can get an answer out of her, that is. Typically she is on vacation every weekend (so forget about open houses unless you beg). Responses from her generally are not comprehensive and she also doesn’t read all of your email. Just whatever first question she sees. Any questions beyond one and forget it.
She showed up late to the first open house (potential buyers standing around outside) and had to have me come let her in because she forgot to charge her access key.
Several times I needed to beg her to have pictures taken of the house. It got so bad that she told me rather snottily «pictures don’t sell houses, agents do.» Two weeks into the listing she finally managed to have pictures taken when she figured out I wasn’t dropping it. Look, sorry it costs you to have pictures taken, that’s the pair of dice you roll as an agent.
Of the 5 times I saw her 2 of those times she brought different dates to my house.
I had an offer, clean for just 5 grand under asking. The inspection report came out and the buyer didn’t like a couple points (all of which were repaired and it took less than 1 grand and 1 week to do so) and she couldn’t hash it out with the buyer’s agent. I’m not confident the potential buyer even KNEW I addressed all concerns. Heather didn’t even show up for the inspection anyhow so it’s difficult to know what she was aware of.
If you can’t close the deal, you shouldn’t try and get the deal.
If you want an agent to do next to nothing and expect things to just happen, Heather is your girl. If you need an agent who knows what they are doing, look elsewhere. I dropped her as my agent and resigned with another one after interviewing about 5 different agents. Over a week after firing her she slinked around my property to get her lockbox. Couldn’t even be fired effeciently.