Essentially, but that is not exactly accurate.</p>
<p>Virtually all real estate agents selling residential property are independent contractors by the IRS, and technically don’t work for anybody but themselves. They sign a contract to work with a real estate office.</p>
<p>However, in order to work as an agent, states require that you be under the supervision of a broker, which only requires some experience and passing a test. The broker typically owns the real estate company, which is almost always a franchise of a big company like Caldwell or ReMAX. Because they own the business, they have exposure if the agent does something wrong or illegal, and they will cut an agent loose if there are problems.</p>
<p>Brokers can also sell, though, and they don’t have to be under anyone’s supervision.</p>
<p>There is a state licensing board to complain to, and they can revoke licenses if the behavior is egregious.</p>
<p>In this case, if CB could show that the agent never presented the offer (agents are legally required to present every offer) or unduly swayed the client to someone who the agent was not arms-length with, she would have an excellent case for a lawsuit. The homeowner would also have a very winnable lawsuit as well.</p>
<p>I’m guessing CB isn’t interested in dealing with a lawsuit or stirring things up, so this agent will get away with it. It sucks though.</p>
<p>I don’t think he is working under a brokerage. He’s a one man show and his business card actually reads "Liberty Financial " which is some kind of private lending company. I searched MLS and his Agent ID hasn’t sold anything as Listing Agent for at least 2 yrs. I have no idea how he got this listing.</p>
<p>I cannot find any specific relationship between this agent and the other investment company through MLS history or loans funded on other properties the investors have purchased recently. But something is definitely fishy here.</p>
<p>Investor competition is very fierce here. Several big investors have spent a lot of money in marketing campaigns. They buy lists of all real estate agent email or mailing addresses. They are sending out letters saying they have a lot of cash and are looking for properties. They invite the agents to search for them. They offer the buying side commission but also offer to give them the listing on the future resell. This is exactly what happened on my little Spanish bungalow. A hungry agent in the listing office heard about upcoming sale and started calling the investors. It was not any established relationship that the agent had.</p>
<p>In comparison to these other guys I have about 5 established relationships.</p>
<p>Unless that agent has a broker license, he won’t be able to list a property without under another broker supervision. An agent license must under supervision of a broker. That “broker” cb has described may have relationship with the owner that is why he is the listing agent and he must be an independent broker. An RE agent or broker in CA can be a loan broker as well, in fact, in ca most of the loan broker has a RE license. Now a days for “residential loan” brokerage, you need to have a separate license, passing a series of tests. “residential” in the eyes of DRE stands for 1-4 units residential, anything out of that category ie vacant land, 5 units apartment, construction loan, commercial RE of any kinds are not in the “residential” category.</p>
<p>I have a broker license, had been independent for a long time. But for marketing and E&O insurance purposes I choose to sign up with a RE broker with a large company.</p>
<p>Yes, it will be difficult to nail him down since he is independent.
You still can complaint to the DRE about his practice, but it will be your words against his.
Because 1. The actual transaction is higher than your offer, even though he prohibits you to increase your offer, but there is no written confirmation.
2. Even if the offer is higher, the seller has a right to decline a higher offer. Unless seller is suing the broker by not providing your offer to the seller, a buyer has no hats to hang on for a slightly higher bid. Now, if the bid is One Million dollar higher on a 400K transaction, there is some thing there to talk about.
3. There is absolutely no law to prohibit the real estate “office” to help the buyer to get a loan. In fact, our office has a separate division to make loans to our agents’ buyer. They have to compete for business, but we are sitting in the same office.</p>
<p>In all, CB has no legs or little legs to complain or even to sue the broker miss handles her bid. It sucks, but no cigars there.</p>
<p>When I bought my house two years ago, there were 16 bids, we did not even come close to the highest bid. Our bids was 20K BELOW the offering price, I am sure many bids were above the offering price. However, the bank choose us because:</p>
<ol>
<li>We have to pay all cash in 7 days, just before Christmas eve.</li>
<li>We had proof of funds.</li>
</ol>
<p>I know when I walked into the RE office, I will be facing harsh terms and told my wife not say a word and just sign on the dotted line and walk out.</p>
CB said her offer was $8K higher than the actual transaction, and all cash instead of requiring a loan, and she was willing to go higher. It’s hard to see why a seller would take the lower offer in this situation.</p>
<p>My bad, but even it is higher, see answer 2 above. If challenged, all seller has to say is that I “like” the buyer, CB will wasted all her time and money to complaint.</p>
<p>Lick the wounds, and hope for the better.
There are many other things more stinky in the world than lost an offer on a house.</p>
<p>In this situation I would not bother to file anything to the California Board of Realtors because I just don’t have the bandwidth right now to bother. However, I think it might be worth it to call the lawyer who was handling the probate and hired the real estate agent to sell the house. All I want to know is whether my offer was even presented to the Seller (heir). And, I want the lawyer to know about how unethical the agent was so that the law office does not hire this guy for any other future probate real estate transactions. (unless of course this guy is his brother or something, then I’ve just shot myself in the foot by proving that I would have been difficult to deal with or something)</p>
<p>Well, I was hoping that I could have pronounced the garage ‘Done’ this week. The new garage roof and drainage system was installed last Sunday. All of the siding and fascia are completed (not painted yet). Plumbing for the water heater and laundry hookups complete. </p>
<p>BUT THEN… Buyer’s home inspector showed up. I don’t know how I ended up in this situation but the Buyer has hired a retired General Contractor to come and do periodic inspections of our work because she is out of town. Not sure how this happened… it started with me telling her she might want to have a home inspection during the first week of our contract just to make sure she is OK with everything before her loan contingency is removed. I think I explained earlier how bad that was when he first showed up and starting going off about permits, etc. Well now this has morphed into him coming every 2 weeks or so.</p>
<p>He came on Thursday and I actually paid my electrician to be onsite to defend his work. Luckily everything is fine with electrical. But the guy just started going off about the garage and how the rafter supports aren’t to code, etc. This garage has been standing solid for 90 years. There has been 4" of standing water on the roof for years - that is a lot of weight. There were 4 beefy guys on that roof last weekend and it didn’t budge. His answer was “You touch it you own it”. He spent the whole afternoon going around the house stating 'You touch it you own it". Then he wanted to tell me that I should put insulation in the garage walls before we drywall. I calmly stated that it was not in the Scope of Work. </p>
<p>The only reason I am wasting my time putting drywall up in the garage is that we originally ran all the new wire, outlets, switches and lighting with the intention that I was going to insulate and drywall the little garage into a studio/office additional square footage. Then we went into contract with the buyer and she wants it to stay as a garage. So, this inspector comes that first time and just starts going ballistic that we don’t know what we are doing and all this Romex wire is stapled all over the place on the studs. Yes, you cannot have exposed wire running through the walls, but we did it with the intention of enclosed walls. I had to explain to him that Buyer changed the plans. I was then put into the position of pulling all the wire and redoing all electrical with conduit OR just slapping up drywall over the studs. I chose the least costly solution… drywall the garage. Buyer should be happy. But inspector then wants to start giving us all kinds of requirements for the drywall, etc.</p>
<p>I had a drywall crew scheduled for Saturday morning. I had to call the Buyer back in Philadelphia and ask her if she wanted insulation in the garage - at an additional cost (outside Scope of Work). She could care less about insulation in the garage and told me to go ahead. Uggh… what a waste of everyone’s time !!!</p>
<p>So, we are drywalled and I just don’t want to touch this garage any more. </p>
<p>I was finally able to get the bathroom layout nailed. This involved Buyer sending over her Real Estate Agent with something on paper because she wanted the bathroom just like his little guest bath. Stood around with that guy for a couple of hours. Took us only a day to get the rough plumbing and electrical completed in the tiny bathroom.</p>
<p>Photos are loaded. We are having major issues with the original window trim wood that I will share sometime soon.</p>
<p>Up to $23,650 spent so far and it’s been about 20 working days on the project. That amount includes $5,600 for the custom wood window order. But it doesn’t include the other large dollar amounts for kitchen cabinets or countertops</p>
<p>Right now I think I’m about to be about $2,500 over my plumbing and electrical budget. But this time it’s not because I hired Mr. Crazy Plumber or because I have another guy wasting time trying to help my employee with the plumbing. It’s mostly overruns on the electrical because it has been difficult to get out the old knob and tube wiring from the plaster walls, and run new wire in the plaster walls without opening up any plaster. The only place we have opened up the walls is the bathroom and the kitchen. Electrician is doing a rock star job of re-wiring the house with minimal damage.</p>
<p>I believe he meant that since we had done some work on the garage we needed to do ALL the work on the garage to make it perfect. Since we had torn off the siding and replaced with new Hardie cement siding he felt that we should have replaced the support beams that are in good condition, but not to current code for size and shape. So, since I touched it, I am responsible for making everything perfect.</p>
<p>Believe me, this whole concept he has of ‘touching it’ could go down a big deep rat hole very quickly. Luckily I have a very reasonable buyer that is only asking for minimal requirement, is not just insisting on everything the contractor states, and has accepted several new costs added to the contract for her requests.</p>
<p>Might be time for a frank conversation with the buyer about this guy… Seems like he is not serving anyone well - perhaps doesn’t understand the scope of his responsibilities.</p>
<p>When I last talked to the buyer she hadn’t reviewed her email yet and didn’t even have a ‘report’ from the contractor/inspector. I am assuming that she has reviewed his report by now and she hasn’t said ‘boo’ about anything. She knows that we move fast and the last thing I want is some request for correction or addition AFTER we have buttoned up with drywall or replaced the subfloor.</p>
<p>This week we are concentrating on finishing all the work under the floors so we can start moving towards putting on the new sub floors in the kitchen and bath. We have learned that it is much easier to tear up bathroom and kitchen subfloor to do all the plumbing and gas work under the house. Rather than the big guys trying to squeeze through a 1926 size crawl hole to get under the house (I need to take a picture, you guys would just laugh at trying to get through these crawl entries). Also, the subfloors under the bathroom and kitchen sink are usually rotten anyway and I like to replace them in all the old houses. We are going the extra mile and replacing the subfloors with very expensive pressure-treated plywood.</p>
<p>This is a followup on the house I inspected and described above on Feb 13.</p>
<p>I checked the result of the sale of this property, it was closed at $325K (offered @275K). I did not make an offer, even I did, it won;t be competitive. This exemplifies that flipping business is at the near end of its life cycle in the Bay Area.
Yes, with about $80K~100K you can rehab this and barely make a slim profit, but it won’t be me doing that.</p>
<p>Artlover
Can you tell if it was a homeowner purchase or an investor purchase? If investor, make a note and follow it. It will be interesting when it comes back to market and see how they remodeled it, how they solved garage and parking issues and sale price.</p>