Patrick.net

The story begins with me selling a house in Sunnyvale and interviewing agents, to find a good listing agent.
I saw that Mr Christian Smith had sold a home in the neighborhood and talked to him over the phone. Within minutes, I could see that he was a very knowledgeable agent. In the end, I did not give the Sunnyvale property to him, but I made a note to work with him on other deals in the future.

About 3 months later, I had a house in San Jose for sale. I called Mr Smith and he was interested in the listing. I believed that this house could sell for about $430k. When Mr Smith arrived, he brought his wife and daughter with him.
In the meeting, Mr Smith said that his daughter Amber would handle this transaction. I was a bit disappointed by this, because she obviously did not have the decades of experience.

Amber suggested that we would list the property for $399k, and we would likely get multiple offers.
She put it on the MLS on a Friday, and by Tuesday we had 6 offers. They ranged from 399k to 435k.
Then one offer - number 7 - came in at 450k. The buyer had 260k down payment, only 190k loan, 2 people and both employed. This was as good as cash.
Amber pushed me to accept the 450k offer, and not to counter it under any circumstances.
This was a bit strange, but given that it was 20k over my expectation, and strong financing, I signed.
It was supposed to be a 30 day escrow.

After 30 days, still the loan contingency had not been removed yet. The buyer kept making excuses.
And my listing agent accepted the excuses.

One day, we had a conference call with Mr Smith, Amber and myself.
Mr Smith, for whom I still have the outmost respect, suggested to "be tough the buyer". He literally said "I think I smell a rate in this transaction".
He suggested that we probably should look for a new buyer.

Amber kept defending the buyer but promised to follow up.

One Saturday, I received an email from her, where the buyer's agent was cc'd. The email actually contained a long discussion of emails between the 2 agents, which I had NOT been part of. Then they started to cc: me. BIG MISTAKE!
I happened to be bored and read the bottom of the email. It was written when offer #7 had come in.
Here is a portion of that email:

Note the last line!!!

Some comments.

- Amber had insisted not to counter this offer, as she was 100% sure that the buyer would not be willing to pay a penny over their already very high offer.
A lie. Obviously the buyer was willing to pay $2000 on top of the $450k.

- Amber must have told the buyer that there are strong other offers coming, and that $450k may not be enough, but for an extra $2k, she can make sure that they get it. Now this makes me wonder, did we really receive only 7 offers? Magically, after the 7th offer [$450k plus $2k bribe] came in, no other offers came afterwards. Strange isn't it? Again, my personal opinion of value had been $430k all the time. So, it may be the truth.
But someone has been misled here.. either the buyer to add an unnecessary bribe, or the seller. Or both, obviously.

I was FUMING when I realized what was going on. However, we were at day 50 in escrow, and I just wanted to sell, and $450k was a good price!
The buyer kept dragging it out.

Finally, the loan documents were at the title company, and the buyers told us that they had heard a rumor that their employer would have layoffs in 6 months, and they no longer wanted to buy the property.
I think that's BS. This was a 6-bedroom house, a 190k mortgage would cost $1400 a month and could easily be covered by renting some rooms out. The truth was, they found a better deal.

We cancelled escrow. The buyers had removed their contingency, so theoretically I could've kept their deposit but it would've been a lawsuit.
Amber suggested to release the deposit to the buyers.
The buyers then gave $500 to Amber.

Amber emailed me "I have no idea why the buyer gives me $500" LOL-LOL

I relisted the next day with another agent, and the property closed 50 days later for $430k, no credits.

DISCLAIMER: The names of the agents have been changed to avoid law suits. In fact, the entire story is made up.