We are in the real estate business, we represent buyer's only and we know the market is slow. We have tried for 6 months to sell our home on the MLS by ourselves. We decided to call BuyOwners to see if they were doing something we were not.
The sales agent walked in the door and told us what we already knew, exposure is important. He showed us their web site, their magazine, and how they do all this TV advertising even on prime time to get people to get on the BuyOwner website to look for a home. He kept talking and talking and we kept waiting and waiting for some dollar prices to be thrown at us.
The closest he would get to telling us anything was to constantly say "Just put it on your credit card and don't pay it off immediately, let the buyer foot the bill. Just pay your minimum payment and add it into your price and let the buyer pay for it".
Being in real estate we can tell you right up front the seller doesn't pay the commission the buyer does. Let's get real here, and he was confirming it. The buyer pays the fee, the buyer pays the commission. Buyer's remember that! Negotiate that fee - don't pay it!!!
Anyway moving on, he kept going between the Elite package and the Platinum package. He would talk about all that both packages included, and we finally demanded a price. We almost fell off the couch. He was asking us to pay between $5000 and $10000 and he was salivating over it. My husband who is always Mr Cool finally asked to see a "menu" of their services. There was no such thing.
This bozo had to hand write out all the different packages and it all boiled down to this - if we would have taken the lowest priced package and added on the extra pictures and virtual tours we were interested in, we could save over $the only difference was 44 lines of text.
In other words the lowest priced package with extras cost less than the packages with the same amount of pictures and tours (with 44 extra lines of text) RIP OFF - and let's get over their ads too. When those people say "We saved $15000 thanks Buy Owner" No they did not. They spent money to advertise and that has to come out of what they saved, they leave that out. This bozo could see we were not going to put $5000-$10000 on our credit card, the meeting was winding down and I asked for a business card.
Do you know he does not have one? Not a personal one, he hands us a generic company card and writes his extension number down. Probably because they don't want us to contact them personally when we realize we have been ripped off. Oh he mentioned the finance plan too. What a creep-what a creepy way to do business, and they should be investigated. They are not honest and up front they encourage you to scam the buyer.
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