What are your expectations when working with an agent on a property sale or purchase? If your agent screwed up would you expect them to make it right with you? And what would be acceptable in terms of how they do that? This has been a topic of deep discussion with me and some buyers I’m working with right now. We’ve had an outsider view of what’s been going on with the seller in a deal we’re involved in and personal responsibility has been a big part of the conversation as we try to keep the sale on track and through to closing.
Basically the listing agent missed a pretty important element of the contract that was based on a financial element of the transaction – in this case an agreement between the parties to have the seller pay up to 3% of the buyer’s closing costs. The listing agent missed this added element of the contract and it was discovered about 3 weeks into the transaction. When the seller figured it out they were, shall we say, less than happy. For about a week now the agent has been trying to haggle to get other people to pay for the mistake which included my clients, me, and his seller. His seller refused and the listing agent was willing only to give out somewhere between $2000 and $2600. The amount in question was just under $8k.
After working diligently and for many, many hours over the past week (sometimes 12-14 hour days) we have what seems like an agreement between the parties to get this sale closed – albeit a week late, but we’ll take it. I can’t go into the details just yet because we’re still under contract but I’ll follow up with this post after closing next week.
A major issue here is personal responsibility. Should the listing agent be liable to pay for the mistake? In my opinion, yes. A resounding YES!!! If I had been on the other side of this transaction it’s what I would have done and that’s not a statement put on here just because I’m writing about it and the terms would be different if the situation really happened. I truly believe in personal responsibility and if I’d missed such a big item in a contract I would have put forward my mea culpa and said, “let me take care of this.” A real estate career is not built on a single transaction. We are in a relationship business and if you can’t show that you’ll take care of someone when you make a mistake then you should seriously re-evaluate why you are working in this field.
I’d love to hear other people’s comments and thoughts on this though. Please feel free to post a comment!
