Many years ago, we purchased a home in Carlsbad, using a realtor that was recommended to us - Jim Klinge. Fast forward to 2025, we recently had the privilege of selling 2 homes in Carlsbad, CA and didn't hesitate to reach out to Jim and Donna Klinge of Klinge Realty Group to guide us through the sales. The transactions were very different, each with its own unique situation, opportunities and challenges. From start to finish, Donna and Jim helped navigate the pre-sale preparation, the listing, showing of the house, buyer negotiations, the final close and all of the paperwork and decisions in between. What stands out with both transactions is the professionalism of Jim and Donna (and their team), wonderful communication (timely, relevant, concise), their deep understanding of market dynamics (setting realistic expectations), their access to top-notch contractors, and last, their ability to guide us across the finish line successfully. We wouldn't hesitate to use Jim and Donna in the future and highly recommend them for anyone looking to buy or sell a property in North San Diego County.
If you list and don’t get the price you want, you can just take it off the market.
If you go to auction and don’t get the price you want, then what?
If you go to auction and don’t get the price you want, then what?
We need a real estate revolution.
It would be nice if the realtors started it so we can help direct the outcome. But we won’t because the current system pays pretty good when it pays and we don’t want to disrupt that.
We need to work the auction format into the mix (being done now by Harcourts and Concierge) and let sellers see that it is the most effective method to sell your home for top dollar on a specific day. The sellers who are willing to sell for what the market will bear can benefit from the certainty in timing and hope the auction excitement causes buyers to bid it up higher than it would have gone otherwise.
The other part of the revolution is how we get paid. Concierge getting paid 10% when the seller is taking all the risk seems outrageous, but so does spending $40,000 on a video that will – at best – have an indirect impact on selling that home. It’s like staging – there’s no guarantee it will sell the house. What is worse is that the agents take all the risk, have NO SAY in the selling decision, and can wind up getting paid nothing.
What other business does that?
For those sellers who want to list at a lofty high price because there house was built with heavy-duty nails – fine, that option is still available. But realtors should insist on a different pay package, and at least get paid something if it doesn’t sell.
Taking all the risk and having no say in the outcome is the worst part.
The house in the video is listed for $32,850,000 – can you imagine the seller getting an offer for $25 million and turning it down? The agents will have spent the $40,000 for the video plus other marketing costs and devoted their time for months just to end up with nothing.
P.S. The seller paid $4,450,000 for that house in 2008.
Thanks for the kind words.
BTW, I think the house three down is about to be listed. How do I know? The drone was hovering taking pictures. Used to be you paid hundreds of dollars for a flyby and hundreds more for the picture. Now those same hundreds get you a drone and the pics and every one after is free.