My wife and I had already experienced short sale chicanery when we couldn’t figure out why a listing agent was not even interested in our offer.
We recently made an offer on land and our agent was asked if we could bring cash to the deal to cover past due HOA and other fees. We weren’t sure how to handle this and our agent replied “my clients have cash, but it depends on what the final number is”.
If I had read this I would have savvied to what was going on and just offered up cash on the side and made a lower offer. Luckily for us expensive lots are a tougher sell than cheap houses so our offer went to the bank anyway — though I am still expecting some sort of cash outlay needing to be made to get closing done. But really I’m not sure what is going to happen and am just waiting to see.
On a personal note, I have been burned too many times by people not wanting to put things in writing and later denying they said something so for several years now if someone I’m dealing with (all transactions, not just real estate) goes out of their way to avoid putting it in writing I won’t deal with them anymore. For example, I’ll try to email my questions and instead of getting answers in writing I get a response like “why don’t you give me a call…” Just a huge red flag for me anymore.
