Do you think I have a case for civil action against a realtor?

Question

We found some land we wanted to buy and made an offer with a realtor. Our realtor contacted the listing agent, the listing agent contacted the party who listed the property and they accepted our offer. We put a "good faith" payment down and I signed a contract to remit the balance within 30 days. I initiated a mortgage on my primary residence which involved substantial closing costs, title search, appraisal fees, etc. Three days after my loan was closed, while we were waiting for the deed to be prepared, yet another realtor made a slightly higher offer on behalf of her sister. What she knew that we laymen did not know (nor apparently my realtor) was that the property was listed by a trustee and they would take a higher offer within 20 days of my initial offer. She did this directly with the trustee despite the listing realtor telling her the sale was pending. I am livid.

Can we seek civil action? There is nothing illegal, but to me it reeks of being unethical.

Answer 1

I suggest you contact an attorney as I am not a lawyer and am not providing legal advice.

With that said. I do not know all the details and you didn't provide them.

Look over your contract. As a Realtor I don't see how if you had a contract they could just go and accept a higher one *unless* you signed something saying as such (a kick out clause). In which case you would have signed saying that you are aware. But, typically a contract is a contract and rather than sue your Realtor you would have to sue the property owners.

Now, if you never signed anything to that effect you do have a case and its not against YOUR agent unless you can prove that your agent knew and didn't tell you.

Now. Was your contract congingent? Did you breach? Did you meet all your deadlines? Without really knowing all this its hard for me to say.

Your first step is to contact your agent and have her explain in detail exactly how this happened to you. Your next step is to contact her broker. The third step is to contact a real estate lawyer. But, most importantly look over everything that was signed.

Answer 2

You do not have any case against any realtors here. You DO have a case against the dimwitted seller who accepted two offers to purchase on ONE property. Regardless of the 'twenty day requirement' of the trustee, if said trustee accepted your offer to purchase (in writing) without countering the offer with this proviso included, you have a legal and valid contract to purchase.

Whether or not the listing contract included this twenty day requirement, your offer to purchase rules here. Unless this was clearly denoted in your offer to purchase or countered into your offer in some way, you should be able to take the seller to court for breach of contract and/or specific performance.

Check all documents you signed carefully to insure that this was not included somewhere (perhaps in the agreement you signed to pay the balance in 30 days)

Answer 3

Unless there was some first right of refusal built into this, I don't see how this could have happened once you had an accepted offer. I suspect there is a piece of this that is missing.

Contrary to popular belief, Realtors don't huddle around and try to find ways to get our relatives into property and screw our clients.

You had an accepted contract and unless there was a component that was not met, you should still be in first position.

Answer 4

you may get that information with out submitting a adventure. genuine assets sales figures are public information. industry fee and tax fee are 2 numerous issues completely. each and each taxing authority (often a county) has a equipment in place so you might project the tax fee of your assets, yet you do this as person electorate, no longer as a classification. i'm afraid that your theory won't get you everywhere. -------------------------- you won't be able to tension the tax assessor to diminish your tax fee. you are able to, although, attraction the cost they have assigned. yet you ought to demonstrate why their assessment is merely too extreme. this is no longer sufficient to easily want it to be decrease.