Sometimes I wonder if I am looking at my job incorrectly.  There are many agents who see it in a more collegial way than I do.  Let me be clear.  I strongly believe in politeness and professionalism during negotiations and I don't like it when agents try to mislead or imply things in order to smoke more money out of my clients.  However, I also believe that the buyer and seller we serve on opposite sides of a transaction have fundamentally different interests.  That makes our work together as listing agent and selling agent in some way competitive and adversarial.  Its like being lawyers on different sides of a case.  We can have respect for the other person but we are only doing our job when we serve our own clients interests.

The other day, I made a phone call to an agent on a home which my client was considering purchasing.  I thought a phone call to the listing agent would help us make our decision.  She called back and left a message on my phone saying that she already had an offer in and that we could get in a backup posiiton.  I was curious how far along this offer was so I called back.  The listing agent explained that she did not have a signed around deal but that she was in position to have one later in the day and that the two parties had reached "verbal agreement."  Again, I was encouraged to put in a back up offer.

As I hung up the phone I thought how differently I would have handled that situation and how differently I have handled that situation in the past.  My job as a listing agent is to serve the financial interests of the seller.  The best financial interest for the seller would be to encourage multiple offers not to discourage them even if I have a "verbal agreement" on terms with a prospective buyer.

In the past I have had an offer come in for my seller which my client reluctantly agreed to accept.  We had "verbal agreement" but it was $25,000 below asking price.  We heard that the buyer was going to sign the agreement the next day.  (Here I fault the buyer's agent because it was in the summer of 2005, the market was super hot and we had already had six offers come in on the property.)  Later that afternoon I received a call from another agent saying they wanted to write an offer on the property.  I told them that they needed to get the offer to me that evening.  They did get me the offer and at that point I called the first agent and informed them that a full price offer had come in.  He was furious, suspecting that I had pulled a fast one and was trying to smoke $25,000 out of his client.  He was also very angry because the two sides had verbally agreed to terms but I was still entertaining other offers.  I proceded to get the second offer signed by my client and go to my office and remove our first offer and then submit the signed around second offer.  (I spent the next day catalogueing times and dates using fax cover sheets to reconstruct the series of events because the agents broker had called me that morning.  Then I called his broker back and read him the timeline.  The broker said "oh" and that was the end of that.) 

The law is very clear in Washington state.  There is no such thing as a verbal contract in real estate.  Anything that isn't in writing doesn't count and I am responsible to serve my clients financial interests.  I believe that means that I must encourage another offer even if I have "verbal agreement" on a first one.  While I a may choose to negotiate terms over the phone they don't mean anything until they are signed on paper.  In fact I bet that I could be sued in court if a lawyer found out that I discouraged another offer based on a verbal agreement to terms which hadn't been put on paper.  That isn't a situation I want to be in.  Therefore I will put everything in writing and I will continue to seek offers for my seller until I have a signed around deal on paper.

Am I missing something here?  Are there other points of view that I haven't thought about?  I would love to hear from you.