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need help from realtors.

O

Omegachi

Diamond Member
Couple of days ago, A house just came on the market for $549,000. Checked out the house and its decent, but needed some work. The total assessed value of the house is listed as $587,300.

So, I told my realtor that I liked the house so he drafted an offer for me for $560,000. The seller side (according to their realtor) accepted the offer and told us they will sell us the house. He told us to submit the paperwork and turn in a deposit to go into escrow (this was 2 days ago). Yesterday, the seller's realtor contacted my realtor and told us he wants us to turn in the paperwork asap (when he told us we have till today at 6pm). So I agreed. turned in my paperwork with the deposit.

Last night, the seller's agent told my agent that they will not sell us the house because they got a higher offer at $575,000. They want $576,000 from us if we want the house.

So my question is, is this legal? Or is this just shady practice by realtors that can happen. They told us they will sell me the house and now they change their mind because someone offered a higher offer.

realtors of ATOT, please help.

btw, I think my realtor is pretty shiity, so i'll probably drop him if this transaction don't go through.

Cliff for the lazy:
1. found a house I like and submitted offer to purchase.
2. seller agreed to selling me the house.
3. sumitted paperwork along with deposit.
4. seller changed his mind and said they got a higher offer.
5. is this legal for them to change their mind even after agreeing to selling me the house.
6. will kick my realtor in the ass if this deal don't go through.
7. thanks.
 
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hm.. sounds like there was a verbal agreement to sell the house to you. Did you tell them you accept?
 
yes the seller can do it, but it's probably a realtor scam as well. i don' thing they are required to sell to you until there is a written contract
tell them no, if there are really no other offers they will bite.

i will use zillow and other tools to figure out the real value of a home. comps don't lie.
 
slag said:
hm.. sounds like there was a verbal agreement to sell the house to you. Did you tell them you accept?
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verbal agreements are not binding on real estate, generally.

And the OP's situation happens frequently in the real estate market.
 
alent1234 said:
yes the seller can do it, but it's probably a realtor scam as well. i don' thing they are required to sell to you until there is a written contract
tell them no, if there are really no other offers they will bite.

i will use zillow and other tools to figure out the real value of a home. comps don't lie.
Click to expand...

My wife is a Realtor and I can assure you that most Realtors do not operate this way. And, for the record, the difference in commission between $560,000 and $576,000 is $480 (before the agent's broker takes their cut and before taxes). Figure a 2.5% commission and that amount drops to $400. Realtor probably sees 70% of that, if they're good, so that's about $280 more in their pocket for risking that you'll walk.

It would be a really fucking stupid Realtor that does something like this.
 
please

i was buying a coop last year and my selling agent showed me one listed for $370,000. My wife and I said we would offer $330,000. Realtor said she would be embarrassed to call the other realtor with an offer like that. of course you could tell they knew each other very well.

ended up buying one for $295,000 a block away that my wife found by accident
 
Omegachi said:
yea, because there were other offers being submitted and I was willing to pay a little more to beat the other offers.
Click to expand...
The competitions called your bet and up the ante.

IMHO, it is better to walk away, unless you must have that house and have money to burn.
 
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alent1234 said:
please

i was buying a coop last year and my selling agent showed me one listed for $370,000. My wife and I said we would offer $330,000. Realtor said she would be embarrassed to call the other realtor with an offer like that. of course you could tell they knew each other very well.

ended up buying one for $295,000 a block away that my wife found by accident
Click to expand...

Many established Realtors do know each other, some quite well. I'm sure there were differences between the two properties that would justify the higher listing price. Maybe she just knew the property and what the owner would accept. I love how people automatically assume that every Realtor is in cahoots with every other Realtor to screw the client out of as much money as possible. 🙄

BTW-My wife has been selling real estate here in North County San Diego for more than a decade.

To the OP, if you don't feel comfortable then just walk away. There are other properties out there.
 
Very likely there was another offer higher than yours. Do you want it that much? If not, then there's still a chance that you walk away and suddenly "the other buyer backed out." We went through that with a realtor - a house sat on the market for over a year. We put in an offer. Suddenly, there was another offer on the table (wow, what a coincidence! And as far as we could tell, no one else had looked at the house.) The realtor needed our "best and final offer" and if ours was higher, the house was ours. What the realtor failed to do was inform us that our offer WAS the higher of the "two" offers - easy to forget when all she was doing was pushing up our price. A month later, she called, "how's the paperwork coming along?" "Huh? What paperwork? We thought that someone purchased the house for more money; you never contacted us that our offer was higher." By that point, we were about a week from closing on the house we live in now. That other house continued to sit on the market. In hindsight, I'm glad that original purchase didn't go through. I liked the land better, but I like the location here a lot better.

The realtor might not be playing that game for his/her own commission - it could be that after a lot of interest in the house, the sellers are playing the game, realizing they can get more money.
 
Fingolfin269 said:
I'm kind of confused. The house came on the market at $549k so you offered $560k?
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I am confused too. Why offer more than what they are asking? Also why would the other offer come in so much higher than yours. $25,000 over the original asking price? I am not buying it. I would walk away. If they call you back saying the mystery buyer offer fell through and they want you to buy the house tell them that your offer is no longer valid since they rejected it, then counter offer at a much lower price.
 
SamQuint said:
I am confused too. Why offer more than what they are asking? Also why would the other offer come in so much higher than yours. $25,000 over the original asking price? I am not buying it. I would walk away. If they call you back saying the mystery buyer offer fell through and they want you to buy the house tell them that your offer is no longer valid since they rejected it, then counter offer at a much lower price.
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It happens in a seller's market or for a hot property. It could be that there was already an offer or the real estate agent knew there were other possible offers out there.
 
Yeah $25,000 is nothing on a property at this price point for something you really want.

To the OP, if your realtor was behind this, time to move on.

If the seller just changed their mind, unless you have a contract signed to sell/buy; I think in all states you are SOL. If you do have a contract, it's going to probably take a court case to enforce if the seller just says "screw u, I am selling to this person instead".
 
State law may apply, but I think that IF you have submitted a written offer and they've accepted that offer in writing, the contract is complete and they can't back out. If the acceptance was only verbal, they may be able to do so.

Real estate is not covered under normal contract law IIRC. They're allowed to list a house at $XXX, get multiple offers for said house and have a bidding war until they get the price they really want...or one that seems to be the highest they're going to get.

We bought our house just before the bubble started. Since we were buying with an FHA loan, the seller was required to pay a fee to FHA. Our offer was for their asking price PLUS that fee.
It was accepted immediately.
 
When we originally bought our house in Colorado we put in an offer.
The house had been on the market for 2 months.

A day later we are told that there was another offer and for us to submit a best and final.
I told our Realtor that our original offer was the best and final - I was not going to get into a bidding war.

Two weeks later I asked the Realtor what the status of two houses that we were originally interested in.

One was sold; the other (one we really liked was still open). Supposedly the other party had a higher offer but a two month delay for closing.

We upped our offer to match but added in closing costs compensation. Using a VA loan actually forced a $200 savings on the original because of the change in closing costs.
 
alent1234 said:
please

i was buying a coop last year and my selling agent showed me one listed for $370,000. My wife and I said we would offer $330,000. Realtor said she would be embarrassed to call the other realtor with an offer like that. of course you could tell they knew each other very well.

ended up buying one for $295,000 a block away that my wife found by accident
Click to expand...

My realtor at the time (my mother) showed my wife and I a house. It was evaluated at 120k (which is pretty nice on the south side of Atlanta. It was on short sale for 80K. I wanted to offer 50k and my mother pitched a fit saying that it was unprofessional.

The house sold for 32K.
 
When acres were going for about $60-80k in 1986, my dad wanted to make an offer of $24k for one he wanted. The person never lived in our state and the property was being sold off when the lady's husband died.

The realtor insisted $28k was the lowest possible to not be offensive. They took it right off the bat.

No doubt they would have taken $24k. Even with the property value crisis now, those acres still go for about $125k-150k.

It's always best to buy from someone that's sort of disconnected from the place. People that are connected have intangible value they put on them.
 
Tobolo said:
My realtor at the time (my mother) showed my wife and I a house. It was evaluated at 120k (which is pretty nice on the south side of Atlanta. It was on short sale for 80K. I wanted to offer 50k and my mother pitched a fit saying that it was unprofessional.

The house sold for 32K.
Click to expand...


yep, realtors are just sales people under a different name. the game is to get you to pay as much as possible or sell a property in the same agency to max out the commission. most of the ones in NYC do it because it's easy to get into, especially if you lose a job or need to change a career. there are a few agencies in NYC that deal with high end properties where the realtors have graduate degrees
 
I can only speak for my experience in NY. And it's something sellers often end up doing. Sometimes they will also receive your offer, then lower the price (still above your offer) and do an open house to try and get more interest. It's happened twice to my brother (buyer) recently. At any rate, the seller can show the house right up to the point where the contract is signed by both the seller & buyer, since you never know if it may fall through on the buyer side - like getting fully approved on the mortgage. Verbal and submitted offers means absolutely nothing till contracts are done.

My brother also recently went to the point where they agreed on a price and he paid $450 to get an inspector in. After that was all done, with nothing wrong, the seller decided not to sell the house at all anymore - probably because they felt they weren't getting enough for it. The sellers were kind enough to pay him the $450 back so while it was frustrating, we consider that lucky.
 
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alent1234 said:
yep, realtors are just sales people under a different name. the game is to get you to pay as much as possible or sell a property in the same agency to max out the commission. most of the ones in NYC do it because it's easy to get into, especially if you lose a job or need to change a career. there are a few agencies in NYC that deal with high end properties where the realtors have graduate degrees
Click to expand...

Some mess it up for others. After interviewing 5 of them, we went with a realtor who got our very common house with 1 bathroom sold in a month then helped us get into this new one. We were going to offer a certain amount to buy this house and she convinced us to offer less based on her experience & comps. That was less commission for her. What's more, we were looking at 600s then decided to build up a 400 instead - also less commission for her. But she would rather do us right and get referrals than get a little more. She's now a family friend because of the whole experience and my brother is also now using her. She's also not a fly-by-nighter - true professional with a resume to back it up. You just have to do your research when you interview RE agents.

Also, it's true about NYC area agents and doing it as a side job. My cousin is a mech engineer by day and shows properties on weekends. Good side money. Never heard of his RE company. Would I hire one of those? He's my cousin, and I didn't.
 
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