Since when does the Buyers Agent know what’s written in our listing agreement?
March 22nd, 2008 | By nealb63 in Real Estate - For Sellers | No Comments »Here is another one of my true experiences in Real Estate. Just doing the job I love!
We have had this listing for quite some time. At the time there were about 400 other similar ones. It’s a 2BR 2BTH condo in Century Village Deerfield Beach FL
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At the time we listed it the price was a bit high and there was lots of inventory to choose from…there still is. The seller finally agreed to reposition the property to reflect current market conditions. After that we started to get lots of activity and I though it was just a matter of time before we would be receiving some offers. Over the weekend….my partner managed to negotiate a deal and verbally presented it to the seller. As of Monday…he had ironed out all the specifics and mentioned to the buyers agent that he thought we had a deal.
Many of our clients that are moving to this community are from Canada because of how strong the Canadian dollar is.
Here is where the problem started. First of all…… presenting offers in writing to our client is a little difficult because they don’t own a fax machine or have email capability. They are also older and like to it the old fashion way by having the contract delivered overnight. We aways try to do what’s best for our clients with the lease possible inconvenience to them but this was the way we had to present the offer. My partner has been waiting for a long time to get an offer on the property and he was very excited to go to our office Monday morning and put together the contract submitted by the other agent. Once the paperwork was all together he set up the overnight package and was just about ready to close the package when guess what happened? The unthinkable in this market…we received a call from another agent who also showed the property and was calling to tell him they were sending an offer over to our office.
My partner told the buyers agent we have another offer ready to send via overnight and since it hasn’t been executed by the seller that we would suggest that they send it over right away or we were going to mail the first one out now and might not get it there in time before the seller makes their decision.
With in 10 minutes the offer came through and we looked at it and then stuck it in the envelope. But before we sealed it and called for a pick up my partner felt bad that the first buyers agent thought it was a done deal. I explained to my partner that if he wanted to call the first agent back out of courtesy just to let them know what happened….just don’t to discuss anything about it other than we needed to present both offers. The other agent didn’t want to hear it and said we had no right to submit the other offer because the seller already accepted the theirs. The problem was it was verbal and the seller never signed off on it yet and hadn’t even seen it. The first agent kept telling my partner that our listing agreement says this and that and that we had to fulfill the obligation to take his offer and not the other.
I then grabbed the phone and asked the other agent how they know what our listing agreement says and what we agreed to with the seller. He kept saying that our listing agreement said this and that and I told him politely to mind his business and that we were obligated to send both offers to the client regardless. He than told me to mail his first and hold back the other one until today. At first I thought…”is this person crazy?” I just bit my lip and said the following to agent number one…”sir we don’t appreciate that you are dictating to us what is in our listing agreement and further more we only called you out of courtesy to let you know that there was another offer to be submitted with yours and that regardless of the price and terms of both contracts….they are both confidential and would both be looked at by our client……Before we close up the package would you like us to continue to proceed with your current offer?”…. He said yes.
I would never hold back any offer even if we had both sides unless it was authorized in writing by the seller. We present and give our views and opinions but never would we influence any seller to taking a certain offer…that’s their final decision. After all they own the property …we don’t.
Just so you know……..both offers were very similar in price as well as the terms and conditions.
I’m sure that anyone who reads this will agree that if we held back any offers before anything was executed…… then we would be misrepresenting the client. We didn’t even discuss this with our seller. we just submitted them and let the client pick which one they wanted to go fourth with. I have also seen many different listing agreements and even the standard agreements I have seen have been altered…scratched out or amended so there is no way anyone else would know what’s in the agreement unless they actually saw it.
I wonder how any client would feel if they knew that what this agent wanted us to do.
I would love to hear opinions and how other agents would have handled this.
For more information please contact Neal The Real Deal Bloom
-CRS-Realtor® /Remax Hometown
2500 Weston Road ,Suite 103
Weston FL 33331
(954)608-5556
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