Realty Austin

Colette Fitzgerald was our Realtor for finding and buying our first home. it started all well with Colette. The actual downside starts later but when we hired her, she was all good, always wanting to help us see different properties. She was always punctual and she gets good points there. But when we finally selected the property, she was not a good negotiator. While we made a low ball offer initially, we were not expecting to get it but let me tell you, I was offering on a house that was in market for over 30 days. So I was expecting her to get some good deal for us. But I wouldn't think she was good in negotiation.

Eventually after her offering us some refund on her commission and we going all the way up very close to sellers asking price, we were eventually able to sign a contract.

As soon as we signed the contract it all went south. She asked us to use her referred Inspector. We agreed to it. The inspector asked us more money than usual but when I negotiated a little bit and then I asked him 2 questions about the contract, he replied back saying he doesn't want to work with me. Colette started being mad at us about it. Initially I thought it was my mistake but later I realized that he was probably a shady business. So I was fortunate to get rid of him and I hired my own Inspector. Right after this, it started getting difficult to talk to Colette. She tried telling us indirectly that she is uncomfortable working with us. During option period we asked her to show us some more properties but she kept giving us reasons and we started loosing time on our option period. Eventually when I pushed her, she wrote back a very unprofessional email telling us that we are being unreasonable and she doesn't want to work with us because we did not follow her professional advice. I always thought professional advice is my right not my duty but anyways. It doesn't end here. We were stuck at this point since we were under contract. I felt like I was being taken hostage. I can't explain how I felt that day. It was really horrible experience. Anyways, I tried to be calm and tried calming her down by apologizing. Trust me you don't want to be in a situation when you are buying home according to your Realtor or else she will not work with you.

Eventually we decided on settling with this house and went in full contract after option period.

She would not send us updates on home repairs or HOA documents that she would receive from sellers or Title company until we asked for it or ping her for something else. It was like business over for her.

We were few days from closing and we have to go do final walk through. I sent her this question - "What if we find something during walk through that was working fine previously during inspection?" I am not sure how difficult it was to answer for her but she did reply back in a taunting language that "unless roof blows away or house is burnt down we cannot do anything". I am sure that is not true.

Anyways, after closing when we went to the house, there was no electricity so I called utility company. They told me that I cannot get electricity for another 2 days since the old owners just disconnected and they did not ask for transfer. I am not sure whose fault was that but I would think that agents on both sides should have worked this out.

Anyways my recommendation is DO NOT HIRE her unless you are an ignorant buyers and you are ready to deal with her volatile behavior. Not sure about other realty austin agents but I personally would not hire any realtor from realty austin any more. I am done with them.

One thing I would give her good points is on doing paper work. Everything was covered.

But overall really really HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE.