Zip Realty (Ziprealty.com) Sucks

TJ,
I am not currently a Realtor, but was one years ago. What you're not understanding is that your agent and Zip Realty do not have control over what their gross commission will be. Years ago, the average commission offered to a buyer's agent was 3% but now, with all the short sale and bank owned listings, they are only receiving 2% if not less. A buyer's agent is not permitted to negotiate his/her commission as it may result in the sale not happening and this would be a detriment to you as the buyer. Look on your closing statement and you will see what each real estate company was paid at closing. Remember, the less the buyer's agent makes, the less you make. Since leaving the business, I have worked with many companies including Zip and I have never had a bad experience. I am an investor and I find that the agents with Zip, although many of them rookies in the business, cared more about me than ones that have been in the business for years.

RE: SatisfiedZipper

You failed to understand the point of my argument. I was not complaining about how much the Realtor received or asking how to compute the rebate (this is simple to understand). I was stating that their website is misleading since they provided a range for the commission % which is higher than the actual you probably will receive. You actually supported my argument with your response by stating the commission is typically 2%, so why on their website are they starting with a range of 2.5% as the lowest rebate amount? This error inflates the amount of the rebate you can expect to receive by .5% . Which might not seem like a lot but multiply that by a few 100,000 it is material. Since they are in the real estate business they should be able to give an accurate range but fail to do so.

Also which authority regulates the real estate agents from negotiating the commission %? Or is this just your ethical stance?

ZIP Realty does suck. I am in the process of resigning from this company and I can't do it soon enough! You are assigned territories, sent leads and offered lousy training. I am not a rookie but (15 years in real estate), decided to return to selling real estate after many years in the mortgage business. I thought this would be the easiest way to transition back. The leads assigned to me are people wanting to look at houses 40 miles from my home, list no phone number, are not qualified, or just feel like seeing their neighbor's home. The company micro-manages all processes and you are not given any kind of personal support. Basically the agent does double the work for half the pay! I am still waiting to get paid for a listing I sold almost a month ago. I have all necessary signatures but they want one more from the buyer and will not pay me until I get it. Mind you this is not a signature required by the DRE. I will be returning to a reputable company soon.

FYI:

2.5% to 3% is by far the most common commission offered in the MLS. I cannot remember seeing lower but have seen 3.5% offered once!

So just because you "think" one thing but reality is in fact different, where does that leave us?
Stupid is as stupid does I guess!

Zip realty sucks. They take all the commission and give the agent very little. The VP of HR Joan L. Burke is a miserable person with stupid views like Nancy Polosi (must be that they both live near san fran.)Joan is a fat pig with stringy blonde hair who looks like an old fish wife of the early 1900s. If you are an agent and bust your ass to make money then Zip is definately not for you. THEY ARE CROOKS with the splits they offer.

I agree Alex, I used to work for Zip realty, but no more, they took much to much money & their ethnics suck. The leads that the give you are 98% shit, worthless crap. I now work for a much better company.

Zip Realty Las Vegas is a horrible place to work. The office is a joke and so are the people. I am not surprized that the company has not made a profit in years.

I had a great Zip agent in Wash DC. His negotiation skills were good and he was very attentive. I think some people are a little confused about the rebate when purchasing a property. The seller of the property determines the commission that the buyer's agent will receive for the property transaction(which is stated in the disclosures). Zip refunds 20% of their commission.

This is by far the worst company to work for. The las vegas team is a joke with mostly new agents, because experinced agents know to stay away.

People get the impression that they can acquire all the necessary skills to represent themselves in a real estate transaction online, because in many states it takes "one semester in a community college" and a few additional hours of continuing-ed every other year.

Something that can NEVER be found online is the EXPERIENCE had by an agent who has been working for years.

I hear people bitch and moan all the time about how the transaction was so easy and that any monkey could do it. They never saw all the hundreds and hundreds of tiny little details behind the scenes that kept the transaction running so smoothly.

Okay, Mr. "Anyone Can Do It", tell me, when it's the day before closing, what do you do when the title company finds another name on the deed record that wasn't discharged, and now won't issue clear title?

What do you do when a mistake wasn't caught on a ten-year-old survey and now you find out the seller doesn't legally own ten feet of his property, or that a garage was built over the property line?

What do you do when a home inspection turns up $5,000 worth of defects, but the offer you wrote with the seller and his agent didn't allow for voiding the transaction based on repairable defects?

The point is, an experienced real estate agent can get you through those hurdles.

Buying or selling on your own just means you have a fool for a client.

RE: Joe H

For the Deed issues isn't that something my Attorney and the bank attorney would take care of and not the real estate agent? That is why you buy title insurance isn't it?

If I signed a contract that didn't allow repairable defects then I wouldn't expect anything for $5,000 of repairable defects. Do people really sign a contract before the inspection?

RUMOR has it that some of the Zip realty locations will be closing within the next 6-12 months includingg the Las Vegas location that they made lots of cuts this year including staffing the office with a skeleton crew and taking all benefits away from agents. Sounds like they are pretty desperate!!!!!!

To register for the "free" ZipRealty access, I used a pristine e-mail account that I have had for 6 years. Rarely did a piece of spam ever trickle through on this account; maybe once or twice a month. Within 6 hours - 6 HOURS! - of registering with ZipRealty, the spam started pouring in to this address... to the tune of 20 to 30 spams per day for the first week, and now it's up to at least 40 per day! ZipRealty blows. ZipRealty is a fraud. ZipRealty is a sham. ZipRealty is untrustworthy. I can't trust them with my email address, and I'm going to use them for my home-buying needs? I think not. Anybody who would entrust ZipRealty with REALLY personal information, like financial accounts and social security numbers is stupid.

Beware Zip realty sends you tons of spam mail looking for bussines. How desperate can you be.

I hate to be the one to tell you, but when you go to purchase your next home and tell the seller's agent that you are not working with a buyer's agent, that is not going to be a factor for the seller to reduce the price even more. Your buyer's agent gets paid from what's called a "co-op" agreement with the listing broker. But the listing broker has already agreed to a percentage commission with the seller, so the seller will still pay the same percentage to the listing agent regardless of whether you present an offer with a buyer's agent in tow or not. The seller is concerned with their net, which is after all fees are paid. I can promise you when you go to buy your next home and complete the process without an agent, then you'll truly see the difference.

Hello all. Can someone PLEASE tell me how their Commission splits work? I keep hearing about how lousy it is. Also does the fact that they are switching agents over to Independent Contractors make the splits even out?

I would like to submit our rating for Priscilla Barnes Davis. We had closed on our home 9/21/10 and have determined that Priscilla did not meet our expectations as a real estate representative. Our first impression of Priscilla was good, so we agreed to have her work as our agent for a period of 6 months. During this time we requested to see about 15 or so properties, most of which we rejected after seeing them. There were maybe 6 that we had a serious interest in purchasing and of each one, Priscilla said that we should offer what the asking price was. She did not want to negotiate at all and when asked to do so, she came up with reasons not to. She would bring up that we would get a rebate from Zip, which turned out to be a fictional offer. The day of closing on our home we were told that we could not get this rebate and we feel that we were lied to about this. We should have been told well in advance that we were not going to get it and Priscilla acted as though it was no big deal even though all along she stated that we were entitled to it. We contacted her boss about this and still got no rebate. We really feel that we were deceived. Priscilla also kept bringing up a ‘seller’s assist’ so that she would not have to negotiate a better price with the seller. One good point about using Zip was that we could see a lot of properties before taking the time and expense of going to the site to see them, although on occasion Priscilla seemed that she was being bothered that we did not buy after looking at the first few homes. She even made a comment once about being affected by the price of gas going to show us houses. Gone are the days when a real estate agent would come by and drive you out to show a property. There were a couple homes that we made offers on before the one that we bought. One in particular we really wanted, but she said the seller would not take an FHA mortgage. She did not even try to negotiate this for us.

After everything was said and done, we feel that the blame for any discourse rests with us as we still went along with Priscilla and Zip Realty. We were going to either run out our agreement with Priscilla or ask to terminate our contract, but we found a home that we liked and wanted to get it before it was sold to someone else. In hindsight we should have educated ourselves more before going forward and should have been more firm with getting satisfactory results from our representative. We remain very happy with the home we bought, but are very disappointed with Priscilla and Zip Realty. Should we ever need to purchase real estate again, we will not use Zip and we would discourage anyone else from using them. Our agent turned out to be inexperienced and seemed to work on behalf of the seller rather than the buyer. During the time of our agreement with Priscilla, she was very concerned about obtaining a feedback rating of 5. She brought this subject up at least 6 times. Maybe if she had been any type of negotiator and had shown any interest in working to get us the best deal, she would have earned a 5, however we give her a rating of 2. One last note, Priscilla abandoned us duringt the closing, leaving us to finalize the deal.

The Las Vegas office got even downsized more. There is no more district staffing manager anymore. Talk about downsizing!!!

Whos left in the LV office 2 people.

The las vegas distict director R.H. is a scumbag.