Real Estate Purchase Ethics Question (for sale, home, buyer)

[totallyfrazzled]

btw, IMHO the "ethics dilemma" would be on the part of the Seller, not the Buyer, if the buyer ONLY saw the house with the listing agent. The Buyer isn't under any legal obligation to the listing broker, but the Seller may be, depending on how their listing contract is written. If the buyer comes back later when the house is FSBO, that has nothing to do with whether or not the Seller tries to sidestep paying the listing agent his or her commission. BUT (big "but" here!) if a buyer contacts the seller while the listing is still active, then I don't know what the law in NY State is regarding someone "interfering in the contractual obligation between two parties" (the seller and the listing agent). I suspect there would be legal feathers flying IF the buyer said anything to the seller before the contract expires... but afterward, well, IMO that's not interfering if the listing no longer exists. I'd just caution the OP against contacting the seller while the house is still listed, to avoid possibly getting sued by the listing agent later if they do end up buying it and if the seller gets caught for trying to skip out on paying the commission as per their contract.

[hurrahs80]

Thanks...all good points (except the Thief one which was pretty silly).

We personally wouldnt contact the owner until the contract expires....I would certainly "ethically" agree to that.

We only saw the house with the listing agent.

Too early to look? Are you kidding me? For buyers without a "Gun to their Head" and for ones who are going to want to be as knowledgeable as possible in this very dangerous RE market, haste makes waste....especially buying now when warm-weather inflated prices are still in effect (but falling weekly I might add)

Additionally, if you are patient, you get to know who the really "motivated" sellers are by watching the price fluctuations the longer the house sits......that's is likely where your best bargaining power lies.

[GigiBowman]

Most contracts that expire get extended immediately unless the listing agent did a poor job and the sellers don't want to use him/her again. But a greater percentage stay with the same agent and extend the listing.

[GigiBowman]

by the way, how do YOU know when the listing expires? Most customers are not privvy to that information. Have you already talked to the homeowners and asked them? Is this a set-up?

[TomMoser]

Most listing contracts have a clause that covers this issue. The seller may still be required to pay a commission. All my listing agreements require the seller to pay a commission if they sell a home to someone who was shown the house by an agent for a period of 180 following the showing, whether or not the listing has expired. This non-circumvent clause is intended to address exactly what you are trying to do.

By the way, your intended action is highly unethical in my opinion.

[LIOC]

I only see this as a ethical dilemma for the seller, not the buyer.

The buyer is under no moral, or legal duty to the the seller's agent.

If a travel agent shows me a trip that I like. I then go and book the plans myself after finding out they agent may no longer sell the itinerary when I wish to go or that planing myself will save me money am I being unethical? I don't think so.

[AndreaII]

In this case, Harrahs80 is trying to steal the realtor's commission with the help of the seller (at least they're hoping the seller will cooperate in their scheme). Their plan is most likely to lower the house price according to the size of the commission and then split it in half, so that both buyer and seller keep an extra $10K+ (being conservative here, probably more like $20K+ each) in their own pocket.

It takes man hours to market a house - man hours and $. Advertisements, open houses, chauffering around people who aren't necessarily serious buyers and who are just wasting time, effort and gasoline, etc. And that commission is split into many pieces - the listing agent far from gets to keep all of it.

Harrahs80 may have stumbled onto this house eventually, but then maybe not. The person responsible for their finding this special house they're plotting to purchase as soon as the listing contract is up, is the realtor they're trying to cheat out of part of the commission. Nice.

And BTW, no, I'm not a realtor.

IMHO it's highly unethical and amounts to stealing, but of course the world is filled with operators being selfish, unethical, and looking to cheat someone so they can profit. Happens all the time. And as Tom Moser said in a previous post on this thread, his contract defeats this type of operation; odds are most listing contracts (if not all) will have a realtor protection clause in them similar to Tom's.

So, good luck Harrahs80. You probably think you're being very clever and savvy about what you're trying to do. If that's the case you're fooling no one but yourself.

[LIOC]

Originally Posted by AndreaII

In this case, Harrahs80 is trying to steal the realtor's commission with the help of the seller (at least they're hoping the seller will cooperate in their scheme). Their plan is most likely to lower the house price according to the size of the commission and then split it in half, so that both buyer and seller keep an extra $10K+ (being conservative here, probably more like $20K+ each) in their own pocket.

It takes man hours to market a house - man hours and $. Advertisements, open houses, chauffering around people who aren't necessarily serious buyers and who are just wasting time, effort and gasoline, etc. And that commission is split into many pieces - the listing agent far from gets to keep all of it.

Harrahs80 may have stumbled onto this house eventually, but then maybe not. The person responsible for their finding this special house they're plotting to purchase as soon as the listing contract is up, is the realtor they're trying to cheat out of part of the commission. Nice.

And BTW, no, I'm not a realtor.

IMHO it's highly unethical and amounts to stealing, but of course the world is filled with operators being selfish, unethical, and looking to cheat someone so they can profit. Happens all the time. And as Tom Moser said in a previous post on this thread, his contract defeats this type of operation; odds are most listing contracts (if not all) will have a realtor protection clause in them similar to Tom's.

So, good luck Harrahs80. You probably think you're being very clever and savvy about what you're trying to do. If that's the case you're fooling no one but yourself.

But even Tom Moser's contract places the duty and liability on the seller, not he the buyer.

[totallyfrazzled]

WOW, there sure are a lot of unfounded assumptions being made in this thread. The most ridiculous of all being that the OP is "plotting" to "help the seller steal commission" from the agent. Why don't you just accuse him of plotting to rob the corner 7-11 while you're at it? If he and his wife happened to go in there last weekend for a coffee, surely they were casing the joint. Your assumption that there's some kind of conspiracy to help the seller defraud his agent is equally as ridiculous as my example.

A buyer has ZERO, ZIP, NADA obligation to keep a seller honest. If the seller is honest, then if a buyer contacts him after the listing expires, he'll tell the buyer "I have no problem letting you see the house again but you should be aware that I won't be saving any commission on it, because I'll still have to pay my agent." To ASSume that the seller won't do that, or that the OP will suggest a price-reduction 'scheme' is insulting. If I were the buyer in that position, I'd be insulted that anyone would ASSume I were that dishonest. And you know what? If I were the seller, I'd be equally insulted that anyone would ASSume that *I* was that dishonest.

As for buyers "wasting" a realtor's time, or looking "too far in advance", or working with more than one agent, I have just about had enough of realtors whining about how buyers should make things easier for THEM. Sure there are looky-loos but don't assume that every buyer who wants to see more than 6 houses before picking one of them, "isn't serious" or is "wasting your time." Maybe those buyers don't want to settle for what YOU (the realtor) think they SHOULD be happy with buying with THEIR (not your) hard earned money. I've heard of realtors who get fed up with a buyer who hasn't decided they like a house well enough to make an offer on it after seeing X number of showings or been looking for more than X number of months... and in that case I say (as a buyer) Good Riddance to a realtor like that. We wouldn't want to work with such a realtor any more than they would have the patience to work with us. And frankly I have had a bellyful of people who ASSUME that either a buyer or a seller is out to s*rew (pick one or more) the buyer or the seller or the realtor. Are there plenty of people like that out there? DEFINITELY. But don't tar and feather someone just because they don't shop (or sell) the way YOU think they should do it.

[totallyfrazzled]

Originally Posted by GigiBowman

by the way, how do YOU know when the listing expires? Most customers are not privvy to that information. Have you already talked to the homeowners and asked them? Is this a set-up?

If the listing agent was stupid or unethical enough to give them a copy of the Stratus listing, of course the OP knows when the listing expires.

There are a lot of stupid and/or unethical agents out there. I'm sure just as many as there are stupid and/or unethical sellers and buyers.

Just as two examples, there have been multiple occasions when a seller's agent or subagent TOLD US what the other offers on a house were. And I've lost count of the times that a listing agent told either us or our buyer agent the PERSONAL reason that someone was selling (divorce, death of spouse, breaking up with live-in partner, whatever). If we as the seller EVER found out that our listing agent had shared such info with a potential buyer or with the buyer's agent, he/she would be fired by us in a New York Minute. Yet obviously there are plenty of stupid and/or unethical agents who don't hesitate to share personal info about their sellers, and I'm sure in most cases the sellers never have a clue. So it wouldn't surprise me in the least if the seller's agent gave the OP a copy of the Stratus listing.