Let me lay the foreground:
We are mentors and educators for our company (Keller Williams). We walk through different areas of Realtor-dom with agents in our office in varied stages in their careers. We are sounding boards and idea givers for several agents... and we love what we do.
Anyway, we get a call from one agent who we have been working with for several months now. She is fairly new to the business and has not had many clients. She had one of her current clients give her a referral of someone looking to buy soon. She sent them properties and showed them homes for a few weeks- builds great rapport! So the other day, she (lets call her Ms.M) goes on the MLS and pulls a few more properties, in a different area that fit their needs. On their way to meet the clients at the first property, they all (including Ms.M) notice an Open House. So, after they look at the first house, Ms.M takes them to the Open House (which happened to be out of the price range that they had given her). She signed them in, chatted with the Open House agent, showed them around the house, and proceeded to take them to the other homes on the list.
When they were done, they told Ms.M, that they really liked that Open House the best (well, duh! It was more expensive!) and wanted to talk with their (out of area) loan officer to see if they could stretch their qualification to "afford" it. Now, this loan officer was referred to them by one of the hubands friends/co-workers. Ms.M told them to call her when they found out. Meanwhile, she would research the home, and draw up paperwork for the offer.
That night, Ms.M calls the listing agent for the Open House to ask a bit about the property and let him know that she was working on an offer. He said, "Great! But, I do have another offer coming in. But, it is from a Denver agent. I'd love to see what you have." So, Ms.M tries to contact her buyers to pass on the news, but they cannot be reached.
((Please note... We (Colorado Springs agents) are licensed to work anywhere in Colorado, as are Denver agents. We work very losely with MANY Denver Real Estate Agents, as they do with us. However, the Denver market is TOTALLY different than ours- and I would not feel competent representing a client in the Denver area - I would refer the business to someone who knows the market. Every once in awhile, a Denver agent attempts to represent/make offer/ list home in Colorado Springs... = disaster. Our cities are too far apart and our markets are too different. Mingling causes brain damage, and other C/S agents fear this.))
Late that evening, Ms.M gets a call from her buyers. She tells them that there is another offer on the table, so they may want to act quick. They stammered and told her that they think that the offer already on the table was theirs. Their loan officer came down from Denver that night to work on their loan application, had them sign a bunch of paperwork and something about an offer was mentioned.
Awe-struck, Ms.M tells them that she thought that they were working together quite well, didn't understand why they made an offer without her, and continued to wish them luck and reminded them to let her know if they needed her again. A couple hours after hanging up the phone, Ms.M gets another call from the buyers. They were both visibly (well, audibly) upset. They said that they think that they had one pulled over on them and were devastated because they really wanted to work with Ms.M, and now they had an offer on a home without her.
She asked them what had happened.
Apparently, the loan officer came down to their house and brought his real estate buddy with him. Mr. Loan Officer told them something about, in order to know what they qualified for, they would have to make an offer on the home and see what got accepted. (WTH??) So, they signed a bunch of paperwork (they had no idea what they signed) and the LO and REA left. Now they were contractually obligated to buy this home, if the offer was accepted. (We were not sure HOW FAR we were comfortable going to get them out of it…) They were fuming at their predicament! The love they had for this home was being drowned out by feelings of being scammed! Ms.M told them that she would try to help them out, and would call them back in the morning.
She immediately called us and told us the situation. The next morning, we met with her and conference called the buyer/husband. He told us what happened and said that he and his wife didn’t even want the house anymore. He wanted to find a new house, and with Ms.M. We explained that there was nothing we could do if the offer was accepted, but that we would keep tabs on that acceptance date- which he told us was the following evening. We told him that we wanted to see the good faith estimate. We have a strong background in real estate finance and was worried that if the LO was THAT sneaky, who knows what he was doing to them on the loan side.
From there, we called the listing agent and told him the situation and to see where he was at with the contract. First, he laughed. Second, he told us that the offer expired less than one hour after it was delivered to his office, so there was no contract anyway. ((24-36 hours is the "standard" here...)). (Apparently, the agent accidentally mis-dated the contract, by writing "contract" date instead of "accept" date...). Ahh… Technicalities favored US!!
We called back the buyers and told them the news. Excited, they planned to meet that night and proceeded to ask for a new lender recommendation, as they were never going to speak to the other LO again. We sent them the name and contact info of one that we work closely with, who, by the way, got them a WAY BETTER LOAN than the Denver LO ever brought up... go figure...
Happy ending??? YES!
Ms.M and her buyers found a new home (today!) and are now under contract to close in a month!! So, not only doesn't Mr.Sneaky real estate agent NOT get the deal, but Mr. Sneaky loan officer LOST the deal!
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