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My husband and I are wanting to buy a home - but were confused about what to do in this situation:
We went to an agency - they showed us a house - the next week we made an offer. The offer was refused - no counter offer. The same day - we went to talk to the owner and she said that she didn't even have a contract w/ the agency. She said it expired over a month ago.
I'm not sure how I can contact them after the contract has expired - and them still show the house and write a contract. (I can understand somewhat if we had had communication w/ the agency prior to the contract expiring.)
Anyway, we would like to just go through the owner and do the purchase, since the agency has been little to no help...and since the contract w/ them is up. But the contract she has w/ the agency says that 3 months after the contract is up that she can't sell to someone who has spoken w/ the agency - BUT since we didn't speak to them while her contract was in effect - does that still hold. Or since the first communication w/ the agency was last week and the contract was over over a month ago - does it matter.
Please help!
If your time line is correct, it's possible the real estate brokerage was in the hold over period of the listing contract. Of course, I'm just guessing here.
If you are an experianced real estate buyer, you might want to deal directly with the owner. If you don't have a real estate broker to rep. you - you will want to hire a real estate attorney. As you may know, buying real estate is not like a retail purchase. - NO return policy!!
Be careful.
My first question would be did they show you the house, as in take you on a walk through, or did they show you a listing? If they took you through the home after a contract expired there might be some issues there. However, if it was under contract when you toured the home with an agent it is probably still under what is called the "protected period" where if the home is purchased by anyone who found out about the home through the agency during the contract period, the seller still owes commission.
My advise to you as a Realtor is to ask this seller to dig out her paper work/sellers agreement or what ever they call things where you are. Read it. It will tell you the day the listing expired and what her obligations to that agency are if any. And they have no right to be showing the house if the contract expired.
I forgot to mention before that as a buyer you may or may not have signed a buyers agreement obligating you to pay your buyers agent a commission for showing you the house. If you were planning on leaving her out of it see what you paperwork says first. And she may not deserve to be cut out of it. She did show you the house you like and submit the contract and there may be part of the story we don't yet know. It doesn't sound to me like she did anything terrible wrong here and likely did all she could do. As a buyers agent she cannot communicate directly with the seller as you did.
Each state is different and you didn't mention where you are. In Texas, we have a "protection period". The protection period protects the agent from any buyers who saw the house while it was listed.
However, the protection period can also be interpreted to say that if the listing agent calls to show the property, and the seller still wants to sell it and agrees to the showing, the listing is still under that protection period. The seller shouldn't have agreed to the showing if they weren't prepared to pay the commissions involved.
I am confused. If the contract was expired, why did the owners allow the house to be shown?
Just because it's expired doesn't mean they don't want to sell...
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