my mental meanderings...

Taken For A Ride

Ok, one of the worst feelings you can get is the feeling that you have been taken for a ride, and that's exactly what happened to me and my brother. We've been trying to buy a house together for the past 3 months or so. Now, keep in mind that in the bay area houses are very expensive, even ones which are a piece of crap.

So the latest house we tried to get was in the Los Gatos. The sellers were asking $799K and we bid $760K for it. Now this house has been on the market for over a month and the sellers have moved out quite a while ago. Even though the house looked nice on the outside and inside, appearances can be deceiving. The house has a major termite problem, the electricity throughout the house was not grounded, not all the pipes in the house were copper, and the roof needs to be replaced. And my dad, who is a broker, offered to give his commission to us so we could fix all the problems with this house. So we felt this was a reasonable offer.

Apparently another party interested in the house also bid the same price. So we were given a counter offer of $785K and the selling agent offered to give up $15k of her comission to the sellers since they were adamant about getting $800k for their house. The selling agent's name is Barbara Silvester and she works for Alain Pinel Realtors. She seemed nice since she was willing to give up part of her commission and we got the feeling that she was on our side. But again appearances can be deceiving.

I guess she is a good friend of the sellers and she helped them buy the house they just moved in to and now she was helping them sell this house. She told us that if the house doesn't sell, there is a renter already lined up to rent the house for $2500. So after giving it a lot of thought, we decided to accept the counter offer.

My brother and I decided to head out around 8:30pm or so to check out the neighborhood. When we passed by the house, we noticed the lights were on and that there were two cars outside. My brother had just checked out the neighborhood less than an hour before he took me there and there wasn't anyone in the house when he checked it out. So we were a little suspicious. We called our dad, who is a broker and he told us that he faxed over the offer and that the selling agent told him that she got it and that she was going to have her seller sign it tomorrow.

We figured she was showing the house to the other party who was interested in the house. But it didn't make sense to us that she would show them the house after she already got our signed counter offer. Apparently she tried to gain our confidence by offering to give up part of her commission in order to get us to sign the counter offer so that she could use it to show the other party so that she could get them to make a higher bid for the house! How devious is that?!! She totally screwed with us. She probably lied about there being a renter willing to rent the house too! It just goes to show you that selling agents are only looking out for the interests of their seller! And in this case, she was looking out for herself too! Since a higher bid for the house will mean a higher commission for her!

Whatever the other party bid, I hope they know that the house has only been appraised at $775K, so whatever they bid above that amount is going to come out of their own pockets. In addition, they will have to shell out at least $20-30K to fix all the problems with the house.

posted by ~clai @ 10:28 AM