Home, Land, Property Buying and Selling - dumping my agent-contract questions

Ok, so I signed this horrendous 6 month contract in sheer ignorance of ‘routine’ 3 month contracts and after 2 months of nothing I want out. The pictures that the fella took are awful! and very well advertised ALL over online :wall: . Everyone is looking online but NO ONE is coming in to see the house. I asked 3 times to have the pictures changed or removed and nothing has been done. The last time they never even got back to me. The realtor's open house had 3 people (from his office!) show up, and what’s worse is it was on a different day than he originally told me! I had less than 12 hours notice. (I think he’s getting too old and messed up the dates and didn’t advertise-usually there are more than 20 realtors that show) Now I’m not considered a new listing anymore and it’s the absolute worst time of year in a horrible year to sell so I have to make other arrangements. I’ve signed a non-binding contract with a realty management company and they believe that they can have my place rented out in 2-4 weeks. So I’m awkwardly sitting with a 4-sale and a 4-rent sign out front.

The contract says that I can opt out if it's legal or mutual but costs can accumulate if its mutual and it doesn’t specify anywhere what ‘legal’ means, not even when I do a generalized internet search.

My question is does anyone know what 'legal' means? Would the lack of acting on changing or removing pictures count now that I’m not a new listing and my prime selling time is gone? I can drop out of college and work two jobs and keep the house but my priorities are elsewhere right now. I just want out of the contract so I can rent it out.

Thank you SO much! ~Tina

FWIW - there are lots of ways to make the contract go away - but the first one that comes to mind is a face to face discussion with your realtors boss - explaining your situation and asking to have the contract mutually terminated. There should be no costs involved, certainly none that would be worse than paying your mortgage when you can't afford to. Sometimes that face to face time works wonders if you go in with a positive attitude - and honesty.

If it doesn't work - then you move to plan B - which involved legalities/etc.....

In order to get out of this without the agreement of the agency, you have the obligation of showing cause for termination of the contract. I like Zster's idea of sitting down with the boss and hammering out a deal.

I was thinking if it didn’t work, I’d raise my asking price and wait out the rest of the contract. I think that its up to me what I have my house priced at anyway. Sitting down with his boss seems very logical, thank you guys.

As a past Broker for a large company I would always cancel the listing in almost all cases and not try to recover expenses. If that does not work call the MLS that has it on their database and see what their options are.