We're There, and Yet....

After investing money, as well as blood, sweat, and tears (indeed, that expression is not an exaggeration), the house is prepped and on the market.  It is competitively priced, attractively situated, and impressively spacious.  Our realtor enthused that we did an excellent job preparing it, and assured us that it would sell fast. 

Except, it's been on the market for nearly a week and we've only had one showing. 

I wonder what "fast" means in real estate parlance. 

Some of the comparable houses sold for similar prices in five days or less.  That sounds fast to me. 

I know that it's necessary, but we're very private people, and the idea of strangers in our house is uncomfortable.

Yet, one showing is kind of disheartening. 

I've also begun to have my doubts about our realtor.  She collected the documents that we signed, which effectively made it possible for strangers to wander through our house and examine it with a critical eye.  She made a copy of our house key, which dangles on the brand-new door handle on our freshly-painted front door in a lock box, allowing realtors to come and go as they please.  We haven't heard from her since, and she has not returned with our copies of the paperwork that we signed.  Again, it's been nearly a week.  

We have asked our realtor to help us find houses in the area where we want to move, and she has not produced a single possibility.  In the meantime, all of the really good prospects have gone into escrow. 

She can't seem to make up her mind about certain things.  Either that, or she can't remember what she told us previously.  For example, we told her about an imperfection on the outside and told her that we planned to fix it.  She said that it was okay, there was plenty of time, and we could fix it when the house was in escrow.  A week later, she barked that we needed to "get on that".  The house wasn't on the market for 24 hours at that point.  Meanwhile, she still hasn't bothered to look up houses for us, and we gave her our search criteria a month ago. 

At first, she said we would go together to look at houses that we might want to buy.  Then, she said she could look up houses on her listing service.  Then, she said we could search for ourselves and go looking by ourselves.  Why are we paying her when we're doing the leg work?

She helped us buy our current house, but things seem to have changed in the meantime.  She has become rude, bossy, and dismissive, and she hasn't followed through on the things we've asked her to do.  I had sincerely hoped that this process would be better than the purchase of our house, which was made miserable in escrow by a terrible financing company.  It appears that our realtor has picked up where they left off, complete with inconsistency and attitude.Maybe it's time to go realtor shopping as well as house shopping.

I hope that things will settle down when we move, and that all this fuss will be worth it in terms of savings and peace of mind.