Are we Allowed to Tell Another Agent the Accepted Price?
Today I saw a FaceBook post from another local agent in my area of San Diego post that another agent had asked for the "Accepted Price" of one of her listings under contract. There were some nasty post from her friends and other real estate people. The other agent I guess demanded to know as it was in the contract! I think the buyer agent got it wrong, we are not under any obligation to disclose the accepted price! We are under obligation to inform our seller of this this point because some wording is in the contract. It states with "sellers permission".
Why would a seller give out this information to the other agent not involved? Simple, if the possibility exists to make more money. This happened to me recently. The appraisal came in $15,000 low and the buyer was asking for the price to be adjusted down to meet the appraisal. This was even after we had a meeting of the minds with the buyer if the home appraised low he would make up any differences with added cash to the down payment. He changed his mind!
I had two other buyers that were interested but did not submit offers before we accepted the 1st offer from the buyer we were working with. Our buyer had agreed to the sellers needs and was well qualified and could even pay cash. But this change of heart made the seller angry and he instructed me to speak with the other interested parties. At this time I asked him for permission to quote our “accepted price”! We don’t need another lower offer or two. We still had an offer that was the highest selling price for the neighborhood it was just lower than what was agreed to.
I did this for two reasons, I wanted to know quickly from a potential new buyer if they were willing to come up to the sellers price and (2) didn’t want to waste time with others when I had a buyer under contract…that was waiting for a response. Turns out our existing buyer was the highest and best. The seller decided to come down on price but took out some little nuggets the buyer was given at the higher price. It worked out and we closed escrow.
It can work in the sellers best interest to disclose price! I believe that is why the clause is in the contract. Are we Allowed to Tell Another Agent the Accepted Price?
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