I think we’ve got that fixed now.

i haven’t bought a paper in years.

i am surprised that it is so hard to find open house infgormation for ypsilanti.

Your information about open houses was very enlightening. I had NO idea that what I was doing could come back and bite me in the future. I’m going to be much more careful now.

Are you joking?

Thanks for stopping by.

And Nick, thanks for pointing out the mistake. I intended to say “open house sites linked”. I’ve fixed that.

I’ve seen the Board of REALTORs open house data on your site and it seems that some other offices don’t participate. On that site today I only see two open houses that aren’t Surovell Opens.

Speaking of mistakes on websites: On the site you mentioned above I found “Any Edward Surovell Realtor may act as a Buyer’s Agent for you”. This is not true. Your office policy changed to designated agency in 2000. Why is your company not telling the truth here?

And, at the top of that same page you have the sentence: “A Buyer’s Agent is an individual who represents you throughout the home buying process and always has your best interests in mind.” Again that is not correct. A Buyer’s Agent can be an individual only in a one person firm. Normally the brokerage is the Buyer’s Agent. The agency status is determined by the brokerage relationship. In your office the brokerage designates one licensee and a supervisory broker to represent a buyer. This is called designated buyer agency.

Again the agency relationship is determined by the relationship with the brokerage.

Don’t feel bad that the writer of your web page doesn’t understand designated agency. It is confusing enough that the state requires designated agency agreements be in writing. This is not true for buyer agency agreements. (This is another example of the difference between buyer agency and designated buyer agency.)

If you have questions you might want to review the Michigan law. It is 339.2517 and you can download the full license law book here http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dleg/redbook_217577_7.pdf

By the way - the fact that your company no longer provides buyer agency probably helped you not be involved in a law suit where one of your agents knew about very serious defects in a home and another agent helped a buyer buy it without telling them about the serious defects. One of the main reasons for designated agency was to help large companies like Surovell avoid liability exactly like this.

Unfortunately the buyer of that home probably had ~$50,000+ in repairs on the home that they may have avoided if they had been warned. I understand they have now lost the home to foreclosure.

Designated agency was created to protect brokerages. It certainly wasn’t created to help consumers.

I’m don’t know all the details in the case above, but if anybody would like to talk to the buyers who suffered from designated buyer agency, let me know and I can try and put you in touch with them. And by the way - those buyers thought they hired a buyer’s agent. They didn’t know they got stuck with designated agency until the problems came to light.

Thanks for your comments everybody!

“there hasn’t been a single site that has the different open houses linked. Until now.”

I think having a website where buyers can search all open houses in one place is a great idea. That is why Edward Surovell Realtors bought the domain AnnArborOpenHouses. com in 2007 and launched A2openhouses. com in 2008 which shows every open house that is listed in the MLS, not just those of Edward Surovell Realtors.

I am also slightly confused about the address .org because it has always been my understanding that .org means a non-profit organization. However, I could be mistaken. Best wishes to you and your new website.

The new blog looks nice.

And it is nice to have the open houses all here.