Friday, June 24, 2011

House hunting. . .

continues, after a major disappointment earlier this week.  We saw a house we loved.  It was 5 minutes from CU.  If we wanted, we could walk to boys to daycare and then walk to work.  It was in the right school district.  It had a lovely yard.  It has 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, and a basement that had been finished--and finished well.  As a bonus, it was within our price range.  It did (or does) need a new roof before winter.  Taking that into account as well as the fact that we were the first people to see it, we put in an offer that was $4,500 under the asking price.  They countered with an offer that was $5,500 over the asking price.  Yes, you read that correctly, and yes, that is apparently legal.  Needless to say, we walked away.  In the meantime, we also filed a complaint with the local real estate board as the seller's agent said some incredibly unethical things to our agent, and we also wrote an email notifying the agent's broker that the seller's agent told our agent that her clients priced the house as they did to generate interest in the hopes of instigating a bidding war.  Again, totally legal, but also completely unethical.  If they had priced the house at what they thought it was worth, we'd never have looked at it as it would have been about $12,000 out of our price range.  As it is, we were maxing out our budget, but we were willing to do so because the house would work so well for us.  Yesterday, our agent received an email from the seller's agent essentially asking what they could do to convince us to meet their price.  I wrote back and said, "While we love the house, we are aware of it's flaws.  We were more than willing, however, to negotiate within the parameters of the original asking price.  As it stands, we believe it is in the best interests of all parties involved if we move on."  This morning the house was relisted at $10,000 higher than the original list price. 

Meanwhile we continue to look, and we're having a hard time finding something we like.  House hunting sucks.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is an appalling story, M! I can't even believe someone would do that. What goes through their head?? And why doesn't their agent tell them no? Eh, no need to answer the second question, obviously. But wow. When you walk into a house for sale, you have to assume they listed it in good faith. I think you're right to move on and I hope they learned their lesson.

rented life said...

It would never occur to me that it's legal to ask for more than the listing price. And NEVER that much more! I think that'll hurt them a lot.

Lilian said...

That is INSANE!! I've never heard of such a thing in my life? I think that doing that is probably not allowed here in the U.S. or at least I hope so. I'm going to share this horror story with my realtor (who TEACHES real estate ethics at our university) and hear her reaction. APPALLING!