[quote=bearishgurl]drboom, no one is accusing anyone here of “unethical business practices.” You’re not even an agent![/quote]
Screwing people in business deals is unethical, period. My standards are considerably higher than those mandated in codes of conduct.
[quote]I now understand almost everything, except these two things:
If this agent, referred to below, didn’t represent you in the failed short-sale transaction, did he represent you in transactions before that? If so, what was the outcome of that representation? i.e. rejected offer(s), failed escrow, etc.[/quote]
Never met him before.
[quote]And, when you represented yourself on the failed short-sale transaction, did the listing agent ever offer to give up any of his commission to entice the bank to accept your (short) offer to purchase? After all, wasn’t he/his broker going to be paid 100% of the commission since you were unrepresented and thus they didn’t have to split any with you?[/quote]
Fair question. We had a buyer’s agent–a former colleague of the listing agent–at a different brokerage lined up for the sole purpose of representing us during escrow–a fig leaf, if you will. We would have split the commission with that buyer’s agent. I never met that agent, let alone signed anything with him, since the deal never went into escrow.
[quote]Thank you for your patience ;=)[/quote]
I hope all this is of some value to the OP who is trying to figure out whether to go it alone. 😛
Perhaps he will note the disbelief coming from even enlightened Piggie RE agents when someone like me talks about how he didn’t follow the rules and still prospered.
FWIW, the residential real estate biz is a congregation of highly regulated smalltime saints compared to the commercial property leasing world. Those guys assume you know what you’re doing and pull no punches. I’ve handled a couple of commercial space deals for a company I worked for, and you absolutely must have a lawyer look at every single piece of paper before signing.
