Then you’re surrounding yourself with stupid people, or you are experiencing selection bias.
Samm, I am a Realtor, and I think a good one. There, that’s my bias. If I wasn’t a good agent, why do I get repeat business and referrals?
I interpret legal documents relating to real estate transactions every day, and I understand most of the language. If I do not, or if a situation presents itself that I am not prepared or trained for, I have access to a legal hotline, or I advise the use of an attorney. Anthing else would be unethical (and in some states, illegal).
Before you sign any legal contract, you should understand what you are signing. If you don’t, ask your agent to explain it to you.
States vary, but in my state I am allowed to make minor modifications to standard, state-approved contracts. Major modifications require an attorney.
Sometimes I get buyers who come by my office to sign a purchase offer and think that they can just scribble their initials a few places and leave in 10 minutes. Unless they have the experience I do, that is a big mistake. I will take all the time required to go over all details of any legal document, because the signer of the document is legally obligated to abide by what they sign.
Oh, I don’t have any trouble with the contract explanations or the legal work they do. All of that information was fully covered.
I have trouble with the first realtor I’m working with telling me, as the seller, “You should accept this offer. It is a great offer. These buyers could find a better property than yours tomorrow.” When I counter-offer instead of accepting the crappy offer, he turns around to tell the potential buyers, “You should accept this counter-offer. This is a great deal on this property. You will never find a nicer property for this price.”
Then the second realtor: “I have a qualified buyer ready to make an offer, but my hands are tied until you sign my commission agreement.” Really? Because that other realtor already brought me an offer and I hadn’t signed anything.
Then the third realtor: “We have so many offers on this property that you want to buy, do you really think your offer is competitive? The bank won’t be countering so put in your best and final offer.” Then our friend makes an offer for us and the realtor tells him they’ve got no other offers and the bank counters back and forth with him.
I’m sure I just must be really unlucky and my experience with three different realtors is a total anomaly.
Sounds to me like you aren’t doing much work to find a good realtor. Luck doesn’t enter into it.
The second realtor spoke the truth. If your first realtor was bringing you buyers without a signed document, s/he was foolish.
Was the third realtor working for you? If not, you have nothing to complain about.
Just dropping by to say that I just sold my house (MAJOR relief, and completely “woo-hoo!” worthy, IMO), and my realtor has been and continues to be awesome.
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She marketed the stuffing out of the property. Premier ad on Realtor.com (where many people begin their searches these days, especially buyers new to the area); very high-quality, professionally done brouchures; brokers/agents open houses; public (buyers) open houses; good signage – all materials attractive and well-written.
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She communicated very well with me, keeping me completely in the loop.
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She collaborated with me on pricing, explaining why she thought the price I suggested was actually too low, and drew upon her experience to price the property in a way that saw it sold in a little over ten weeks, for 2% under asking price.
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She made suggestions as to pre-inspection repairs, getting warranties, and staging, but took it in stride when I didn’t agree to do everything she suggested, or how she suggested it.
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She was smart enough to negotiate when I wouldn’t have thought to. The buyers wanted to move the closing up. I said that was fine, but she didn’t tell their agent that. She waited until the inspection was done and then suggested I make a cash tender to cover the cost of repairs, in lieu of making the repairs, and implied that if they accepted the cash, in the amount I suggested, I would then be able to close earlier. No agreement there and, gee, I would need more time to make repairs, so “no” to moving up the closing. Because they want to close early, more than they want the (minor) repairs done, they agreed. I would have agreed to move up the closing anyway, and lost that as a bargaining chip. Mind you, the next two weeks are shaping up as a bit of a nightmare for me because of the early close, but hey, that was my decision.
In short, my Realtor is very, very good at her job and has done a very, very good job for me. It wasn’t all her, mind you. It’s easier to sell a good property in a good location and that’s what I had, because that’s what I bought. And the house shone like a freakin’ diamond, inside and out, which was a hell of a lot of work done by me, or money paid by me. But her expertise certainly made the process easier; in the crucial area of pricing the property to (a) maximize my proceeds but (b) actually get it sold, I think her input was invaluable. But it’s not like she rang my doorbell or I tripped over her in the street; she came highly recommended and I agreed to work with her after also talking to two other Realtors who did not impress me as much.
There are shitty Realtors and wonderful Realtors, just like there are shitty and wonderful doctors, lawyers, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, etc. I would join in the suggestion that complaining of never having met a good one might say more about the complainer than it does about Realtors, generally.
But yeah, the all-caps thing is pretentious bullshit, and they should all cut that out at once.
I don’t have all the facts in this case, but let me explain a little bit about how it works, and keep in mind there are differences between states.
Any brokerage company that belongs to the local MLS (Multiple Listing Service) has a blanket agreement with all other members in the same group to pay compensation if they bring a buyer to the table. This is fee splitting or shared commission. This means that no separate agreement with a buyer is necessary (the listing agreement covered that with an exclusive selling arrangement).
But if an agent does not belong to the same MLS, that agent would want to be sure some compensation was forthcoming if a transaction took place. Possibly the second Realtor in your story was in that category. If so, he could approach the situation by getting a listing contract with the seller (impossible if the seller already had an exclusive listing contract with someone else) or a buyer agency contract with the buyer. Or he could join the MLS if qualified.
Direct to the question in the OP, here is an article by a Washington-area lawyer in yesterday’s Post on the issue of what happens if the seller won’t honor the contract. This will be available online for at least two weeks.
Of course, it’s just a newspaper article, not legal advice for you, but it gives you the flavor of how complicated this sort of stuff can get, as **PastAllReason ** suggests.