I was faced with a dilemma. I was referred a client by a Realtor. It was a short sale. The Realtor brought me in to handle the negotiation of the short sale. Things were not going right. To make a very long story short, the sellers told me on Friday that they enjoyed working with me but they didn't want to work with their Realtor anymore. They asked me to refer another agent to them to sell their home. They felt that their Realtor was inept and that he had told the city inspectors that there was an abandoned oil tank which basically was the deal killer since upon removal it was determined that the soil was contaminated and we simply ran out of time. The current appraisal expired, the values in the area have gone up, the offer at this point is too low since the appraisals and BPO's support a higher value.
Now I work with a lot of agents and I first told them, yes I definitely can continue to work with them. I had no intention of cutting out the agent, but I wasn't clear to the client. I called a Realtor that I work with who is a top agent in my area and I explained the situation. The current Realtor was a part time agent, a nice guy who worked really hard on this deal. One of the problems was that his office also had the buyer and when things didn't go well in the negotiation, instead of re-marketing the house 3 months ago and selling it to someone else he tried to hold on and ultimately, the seller got hurt because the bank was requiring that she come up with $38,000 to meet their required net. The seller on the other hand wanted out and was afraid to start fresh. I advised her to return the down payment sell it to someone else, and not be afraid that the house wouldn't sell, but she was nervous and couldn't sleep thinking about a possible foreclosure.
My Realtor friend told me that the problem we were having was because the house was undersold. She told me to tell the sellers that the first Realtor worked really hard and that he should relist the house at the current value and sell it quickly and that I would continue to work with them under these conditions.
I called the sellers into my office on Friday and I told them that I was referred to them by the original Realtor and that I would be very happy to work with them further, but only with that Realtor. We discussed the problems that occurred. I arranged for the original Realtor to sign a new listing agreement with them and he arranged an open house for this afternoon.
So here we were, full circle starting over again and I feel good. What would you have done??
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