Unethical REO Listing Agents.. How many are in your town?

Amanda.. I have noticed this about agents here.. They love to think they are above all the seasoned veterans who aren't lucky enough to have an asset manager in their pocket like they have. It will be interesting to see what they do after the REO's dry up, as they have been, and they have burned all the local agents.

Ryan, arent you REO Manager at Gateway ? I have work with you before. I am confuse.

The part that bothers me is that many REO agents in our area are actually breaking the state law by not presenting the offers which may give the best return to the bank.  A property came on the market in a high rental area here in South Florida, and of course, all the investors I work with were interested.  It was a 3 BR 2 bath which had been stripped either by the previous owner or by crooks....but, it would rent for around 16 to 18 hundred a month and was listed for 25K.  I had one investor bid 35000.  We got no response, of course.  Later, while showing in the same area, an agent said he "owned" the house and would sell for 55K.  I went back in to check and he had paid $20000 for the property.  How the heck did the REO agent justify THAT. 

I do not care if the offer is written on a napkin in crayon.  The only one who shold be making decisions as to the acceptance of an offer is the principal in the transaction! 

Ruth Arnold, Rare Homes and Properties, Pompano Beach, FL

Your South Florida Connection, 954-257-3257

I guess the question now would be if there are any legal ramifications for those agents? Can a buyer come back and prove that they submitted an offer higher than sold price, the listing agent double ended the deal and never submitted anyone else's offer to the lender. 30 days later, the same reo is relisted as a flip for almost 100K higher and is currently under contract. Can the buyer come back and sue the agent for the gains on the property? True story... what are your thoughts?

I can tell you that this is definately happening in Ventura County.  I have placed offers for clients only to find out the REO sold before it was put on the MLS.  I started doing some research and found that there are certain real estate agents (they know who they are) and they are starting LLC's purchasing the properties that are listed with them by the asset management company under the LLC and then flipping the property for $100K more.  This is so unethical and should be illegal.  I hope some asset managers read this and start investigating who they are listing their properties with to see if they are truly ethical. 

Question: does anyone have any advice on how to get the seller's agent to get control of their seller, i.e. do they still want to sell the property?  It still shows active in the MLS, over 120 days now, and listing agent (broker as well) to a property that my buyer wants to purchase has no sense of urgency to make a counter offer?  I've sent countless emails and haven't received any kind of response?  Could he be trying to double end it?  Waiting for the market to allow it to go up in price?  I don't know if he is unethical....my client even wrote a letter addressed to him and to the sellers that besides offering higher than the asking price, is extremely well qualified?  Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.....

I am in a situation right now that I believe is very similar. I found a house listing that was asking only 93k on. I called the listing agent (was a reo) to ask questions and she was very rude and told me that she had only just gotten the listing and didn't know anything but the asking price. We went to our agent and submitted an offer immediately for the asking price of 93k. The house was listed on the altisource website. The next day she called our agent and asked for highest and best. We gave 107,500 because the website showed the 93k as 86.5 percent of their net, so we did the math to come up with 100. She put in an offer for her investor at 108,000 and told us the 108 was accepted. We sent in another offer for 112,000 and are waiting to see what happens. I have had several people call her during this process and she always says its under contract which isn't true. It wasn't listed on MLS until we were supposed to submit the highest and best. Can we sue? Can we stop the sale? We just want to buy the house. Can we contact the bank? No foreclosure deed has ever been shown to us, she claims she doesn't have one and the county court house doesn't have one either.  My husband believes she is just going to re list it in a month or so and draw commission twice. HELP!

2009/2010 has been eye opening for me. I have yet to do a transaction on a REO where the listing agent dealt ethically. In every case (I'm not joking here) the have been at the top of unethical behavior. In many cases our hi bid was rejected in favor of a low bid and we always find out it's the agents family or friend who got the property. Does the Board Or Realtors care? No.

In one case I was buying a 4.5 acre parcel. The MLS made it sound like the perfect investment. It had the water meter installed and 15 feet from a Edison drop line. Also all perk tests were done....The perfect property. I was accepted and docs were drawn up. At the last moment I went to Riverside City Hall and spoke to the "Land Use" desk. This property is 43% "Do not disturb" and the only area left to build is undesirable. Apparently 2 Owls and some Kangaroo Rats occupied the property so the county shut 43% of it down. It's was no wonder the current Owner just walked away from a 250,000 mortgage. I would too. The Listing Agent and the Bank were going to let me buy this without disclosing the problem. I know they knew because it was the only property affected buy the Owls in the entire valley. A well know Toxic investment in my opinion.

The industry is corrupt and regulation has fallen short in California.

We were looking up a property that was on MLS for just 3 days. The house was listed for an Open House this Sunday. We were very interested in the property, so we had our buyer's agent call the listing agent and ask if they are doing any private showings before the OH, and if they're currently accepting offers. The listing agent told our buyer's agent that they already have an 'accepted/signed offer' just an hour ago (3 days after listing and 2 days before the OH) and a couple of 'backup' offers. So, she advised our buyer's agent that she'll 'get back' to us 'if needed'.

We then asked if they're then canceling the OH now that they have an accepted offer, and she said they're keeping it on per seller's instructions. We honestly did not understand what the point of keeping the OH on was, if they already accepted a signed an offer. What a waste of buyer's/seller's/agents' time, if they are not inviting any more offers!!

Also, curiously, they did not update the MLS listing with any notes/status change. So, we submitted a formal, very strong backup offer the same day well above the list price with mortgage contingency removed, and complete with proof of funds and a strong credit score proof. The seller's agent immediately (around 4PM) called our buyer's agent and told her that she was 'highly displeased' with us and our buyer's agent and with the fact that we submitted the backup offer (why, I don't really get it - all she needed to do was just forward the offer to the seller).

And the seller's agent also casually mentioned that she was doing another private showing for another party - coincidentally on the same day at 5PM - well after the seller 'accepted' the offer and the seller's agent told us she didn't want us to submit our offer (again, why I don't know; certainly not for new leads cuz she already knew the buyer's agent of that other private showing party and could have gotten that lead even without the private showing). Anyway, so the listing agent 'reluctantly' invited us over to that other private showing with the condition that we should come along with our buyer's agent before 5:30PM, and that if we weren't there before 5:30 then she wouldn't be able to even open our offer, or accept it for submission to the seller.

Of course, we made it in time for the erstwhile 'secret private showing' along with our buyer's agent, but the listing agent was quite pissed off with us - not sure if the listing agent is now obligated to pass our offer on to the seller (because of our written offer), or if we pissed her off enough (again don't know why that would be) that she'll ignore ur offer and/or steer the seller away from our offer. . Also, we're trying to make sense of the listing agent's inconsistent story and wondering if there's anything fishy in this whole turn of events. Thoughts?

Thanks,
Motivated Buyer.

the root cause of this malady is the lack of transparency at every point during a typical RE transaction, which leaves the best interests of both the actual parties of the sale - the seller and the buyer - compromised, at the mercy of the listing agents' XL egos and manipulations.. the system makes it very easy and tempting for the listing agent to leave the ethics alone to go down the drain when they are just optional and voluntary/unenforceable, especially given the cha-ching potential in case of dual agency and/or other possible favoritism scenarios (example: investors getting tipped off ahead of the market in return for favors..

A potential way to introduce transparency into the process and reign the unwieldy control that sellers' agents exploit may be for MLS to enhance the bid process to require every bid to be submitted/registered online and attached to the listing with details of every submitted bid clearly visible to sellers and their agents.. and perhaps allow public visibility into the number of bids (with all other bid details obscured), and their respective acceptance state

My realtor just submitted my highest and best offer on the property located at 6478 NW 113th Pl Doral, FL 33178.  The offer is $576,000, cash with no contingencies to close.Through my realtor we presented an offer on February 21. My realtor Followed up every Single working day until today trying to make sure that they did receive the offer, forwarded it and followed up.  Due to the listing broker Justine Garcia's lack of response, I decided to raise my offer because she ignored every call and it did not make sense to me as a buyer, that the listing broker would avoid every attempt from a buyer to raise his offer to secure a property purchase.I had very clear something fishy was going on with this broker Justine Garcia. She intentionally tried to diss estimate the offer and only through her secretary we were able to make some follow up to confirm the offer was presented , or so they said. We insisted that we wanted to raise our offer  since we did not receive any response from the bank and we (my realtor and I, on 3 way call in every communication) left multiple voice and text messages to the broker whose only response every time was a text message saying "she could not talk at that time."  Some days there were up to five communication attempts from my realtor to Justin Garcia and she would never answer the phone. Finally, for once, she called us this week to let us know that the bank was asking for a "highest and best offer". And without anyone asking, Justine Garcia made sure to let my realtor know that our offer was already the highest offer and that we did not need to race it anymore.  I was on the line with my realtor when I heard her say that. Why was she so eager to make sure that we did not raise the offer when she is supposed to be representing the interests of the bank and get the highest dollar value for the property??? Considering the previous weeks and her very strange behavior,  I knew something was wrong and regardless, I told my realtor to raise up my offer another $5000.  I did not trust Justine Garcia and I know she had something in hand. More exactly, I knew JUSTINE GARCIA had an investor of her own, probably where she would make both commissions or arrange for herself another type of benefit somehow for her preferred Buyer.   Justine Garcia did not know it but in every single call, since I was out of the country and I wanted to follow up on this offer, my realtor had me on the other line listening to every attempt to talk to her and I was listening as well when she was clear to say that our offer was the highest and that there was no need to race it.  Needless to say, not only was she saying what she told my realtor to prevent us from improving our offer to the bank but she was being unethical and unloyal to the bank that is trusting her to sell REO assets to favor the interest of an investor she probably had in hand all along while this price was manipulated down throughout a year. Justine Garcia's behavior is unethical, unprofessional, illegal and it is affecting financially the bank that trusted her to list the property as well as the interests of real buyers that invest money and freeze in escrow funds to comply with bank guidelines, only to be used as dummies to  make the bank believe there is a bid, when she is handling the transaction beginning to end to favor a party of her choice.The MLS listing remarks stated that she had lost the keys to the house and that it would be replaced probably to avoid other realtors from previewing the property (and the keys were in the lockbox all along). My realtor sent me the listing and I took photos as evidence, in case she wants to change that now. Not once, did my realtor receive any communication, counter, etc. from the bank through Justine Garcia. To be honest, I don't even know if my offers were ever presented to the banks and if they were, I am sure her investor was aware of every move and she was using my offer to follow guidelines with the listing bank, always knowing that steps were followed to grant the property to the investor of her choice without the bank knowing what was happening.I was certainly disappointed but not surprised from the unethical behavior of Justin Garcia, to hear today from my realtor that THE BANK HAD CHOSEN ANOTHER OFFER .  Why wouldn't the bank counter offer to a buyer that voluntarily had raised his offer twice?  Probably because the bank did not know what was really going on.Justine GARCIA had this arranged from day one to full the bank and use me and my offer, and my escrow and the money I invested in title search, lien search, Inspector's, etc. to follow the bank guidelines to present an offer.I don't know if the offer I just submitted online on Ten-x through my realtor, Will first go through her and she will again manipulate it to not let the listing bank know that I am insisting on bringing up a higher offer for the benefit of the bank and myself.But I really hope that this complaint about her poor ethics and manipulation of the listing does reach the bank and my offer is treated fairly and I am given the opportunity to purchase this home if $576,000 cash without contingencies is a better offer than the one Justine Garcia's arranged Investor has presented. I raised my previous offer from $535,000. Before that it was $530,000 and my original offer was $515,000. Listing price was $589,900.And I do hope that this complaint reaches the right party at the bank that is trusting Justine Garcia to list properties and the bank understands and  learns the act she has going on.  the bank (BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON) deserves to know that they are not getting top dollar for the properties because the listings are being manipulated. I will file with the DBPR a formal complaint about this matter, despite my realtors request to let the situation go. The public cannot be submitted to this handling of a real estate market that needs to be transparent or it will end as it did in 2008 again. I hope you allow my post to remain with the name of the listing broker. That bring accountability to a broker that otherwise will continue to affect buyer's and bank protected by the control of information she holds as a listing agent for an REO. Buyer