what to make of this?? headache with an excl. listing!!

this house we really like is an exclusively listing with an agent. we saw the house 3x with this agent but every time we asked him a question, he wasn't able to give us a firm answer. DH made an offer anyway. a few days later, i called and asked to see what the seller say. he told me that he didn't give the offer to the seller because the seller wants no lower than certain amount (which he gave me). ok..fine..i told him we want to increase our offer but still lower than what the owner want. said that he will convey the offer to the owner. came back 2 days later and said too low and owner would not counter. this was 3 weeks ago. yesterday i found out that they lower the price by $40k a week ago! i don't get it!!

for some reason, i don't believe the agent is giving our offer to the seller. our offer price and their new asking price is only $54k difference so i can't believe the owner won't counter!! can anyone tell me what to do???

i guess i can call the agent and see what's up but we don't really want to pay much more than what we offered. the house need a gut job.

ETA: for some reason the house is on zillow.com. is it still consider exclusively? even though we saw the house with this agent, can we work with another agent? we're just not getting anywhere with this guy!!

hope i made sense above.

Message edited 10/11/2011 12:10:42 AM.

Re: what to make of this?? headache with an excl. listing!!

Not sure there is anything you can do to confirm the agent gave them your offer. But I have to say 54K difference between new listing price and your offer is a lot and it was originally 94K less than the original asking price. I think many people might not counter that because it is such a big difference.

Re: what to make of this?? headache with an excl. listing!!

We had an offer for over 150k less than what we listed. We did not bother to counter that offer. While we did not sell, our home is priced exactly what other homes have sold for. I was told by a few other realtors that our realtor did no marketing. I saw that. I was upset with my realtor because he was awful. I am still ok with not countering the low ball offer and living in our home.

Re: what to make of this?? headache with an excl. listing!!

A listing can be exclusive and still be marketed on all of the real estate websites (such as Zillow). It just means that the listing agent is keeping it as an exclusive within his company...so only agents working for his office can sell the house; the listing agent is not cooperating with other agents. This differs from the typical MLS listing, where ANY agent who is a member of MLS can show or sell the property.

The listing agent is obligated to present ALL offers to the sellers, regardless of how low they are. He doesn't have discretion to just keep that information to himself. The only reason I could think of that he might not want to do that is that your offer was so low. If it was initially almost $100K below asking, and now more than $50K below their asking, he may not want to "show face" for such an offer. Sellers may be angry and insulted, and may "shoot the messenger" so to speak. But he should still present it.

I know you said that the first tme, he didn't present it, and the second offer, the sellers didn't counter. I think the lack of counter could be very plausible. You never know where a seller is coming from or how motivated they are. They may think that you are not very motivated to buy and are just looking for the "deal of the century," so they might have thought it's not worth countering. Or they may have been so insulted that they didn't want to counter. It's hard to say.

But do you know how well the house is priced, given local comps? Even if it needs a ton of work, the price may reflect the work it needs already. And even if not -- when you make a low offer, you (or your agent, in other case), really needs to do more than present a number. You need to make a case as to why you want the house and why your offer makes sense. Justify your number by explaining how you came to it (based on facts, such as recent comps, work that needs to be done, etc.). Sometimes it helps to write a letter to the owners talking about what you like about the house and how you'd use and enjoy it. But throwing a number out there without any support, if it's low, is not the way to go.

As for what you can do now, if you suspect the listing agent hasn't presented your offer... you could ask for an offer acknowledgment in writing (basically the agent could have the seller confirm that they received you offer of $x and have decided not to make a counter offer), but of course, if the agent really wanted to, he could draft up whatever document he wanted to and present it to you. Not ethical, but plausible. You could also elevate the issue to his supervisor, assuming the listing agent is not the broker/owner of his office. He probably has a manager or broker under whom he is working. That's about all I can think of.

Re: what to make of this?? headache with an excl. listing!!

Christine gave you great advice as well as what the listing agent is obligated to do.

I would call the agent again and ask if they presented your offer. Do you have 20% down? Are you free to buy the house without having to sell an existing one? If you are firm about your offer, I would tell the agent that but also mention the things that are on your side (ex: 20% down, flexibility on closing time, no need to sell existing real estate, etc.) I would also tell the agent to take down your information in case the sellers don't like your offer now but grow to like it in a few months from now (if the house is still on the market).

Re: what to make of this?? headache with an excl. listing!!

thank you all for ur replies.

this is a small area in queens. houses smaller goes from low 600k to houses a little bigger is about mid 700k. no one lives there now and according to zillow, it's been out since 6/11 but MIL and i remembered it has been longer than that. the place is crap. everything need to go...cracks in the walls, water marks on upstairs so there have to be some leakage from the roof. broiler won't last 5 years. pretty much everything to be replaced and gut out before we can live there. it's not projects we can take our time doing.

in case, our offer price is lower than the range above because of all these problem we can see and possible what we don't see

Message edited 10/11/2011 11:56:54 AM.

Re: what to make of this?? headache with an excl. listing!!