Glad to hear that everything worked out well for you. My wife and I recently moved from SD to DC and our experience in buying a home here has been horrible. Permit me to share, if you will.
We started looking for a house in the middle of the summer. After many weeks of looking at houses that didn’t meet our list of desires we changed realtors. The new realtor was great and listened to what we wanted and really worked hard for us. That was the good news.
So we finally find a house in a great location, good schools, good commute, regular sale, etc, etc. I will call this house “A”. Put an offer in on the house, do a little negotiating and have a ratified contract. 2 days before closing my wife discovers a significant defect in the contract (County records are different from what the house was being sold as). Our realtor contact the listing agent(who is also the owner of the property) to work out the problem. The seller is in possession of records (septic cert) showing the discrepancy but refuses to submit them to the title company. Those records are required to be able to proceed to settlement. We agree to give the seller time to remedy the problem and extend the closing date approximately a week to expire at 1200 on the designated day. We have a second house, House “B”, in hot standby in case the contract falls through on house “A”. Noontime comes and goes on the second closing day and we can’t get a reply from the seller of house “A”. He finally responds late in the afternoon saying that he refuses our offer and declares the contract null and void. (Which he cannot do. There is a bunch more to this story and could be a stand alone post but I want to get to the rest of the houses)
We scramble to get the offer in on house “B” because we know there is another offer on that house. The seller agent knows the offer in coming in but decides to only submit the other(lower) offer to the sellers and go to bed early that night. In the absence of any other offer, the sellers take the lower offer. Our offer is never submitted to the sellers. SO the delay on the part of the seller/agent on house “A” causes our offer on house “B” to be delayed. Couple that with the professional negligence of the seller agent and we lose house “B” as well.
Next up is house “C”. Despite being on the market for a looooong time, we decide to put in an offer on it. As if by magic, this house becomes a hot property as soon as we show interest. There are 3 interested parties of which we are one. The first offer is a bit lower than asking price. We submit an offer that is over asking price because, at this point, we just want a dang house. Unbeknownst to us, the seller agent from house “B” knows the seller agent from house “C” and secretly tells her that we were really late in submitting an offer on house “B” and that she probably doesn’t want to deal with us. Really? Anyway, the seller agent on house “C” only submits the first offer to the seller ignoring the two higher offers from us and the other party. We lose house “C”.
On to house “D”. We put in an offer on this place and it looks like it might go through. One sticking point is that the sellers keep insisting that the house is being sold “as is”. Sorry there fella, but the VA does not do “as is”, my loan is a VA loan and the contract is contingent on the VA funding the loan. If you don’t like it you can put your house back on the market – hey, it’s only been an active listing for a little over 1000 days… your choice.
As it stands right now I think I have seen just about every breach of professional conduct that I ever wish to see from realtors. How hard can this be? You have a house you want to sell. I have a pile of money and funding to buy the dang thing. Let’s get the deal done. It almost seems that people are deliberately trying to make this as difficult and painful as possible. If house “D” falls through I think I will go back to renting.[/quote]
Akula,
We’ve dealt with the same issues in SD that you’ve mentioned here — especially the listing agent not submitting the offer, even though it was higher/better than their “perferred” offer. Because of this, we decided that we would personally submit every offer directly to the sellers. That way, at least you know that the seller saw your offer. If they decide to take a lower offer for whatever reason, at least you know you got a fair chance.
This is what we eventually did on the house we purchased. I went directly to the seller before saying anything to the listing or selling agents. Only after I had negotiated everything with the seller did we have the agent write it up and submit it per our specifications. Though the agents might not like it, that doesn’t really matter. They have destroyed their reputations so badly by these unethical deals (like not submitting ALL offers, which they are legally required to do), that no buyer or seller should ever feel obligated to do things by the “realtor rules” in a transaction. Get a good attorney, if you feel the need, but remember that you are the only one representing your own best interests.
