I came across this article that the local Washington Association of Realtors(R) sent out about an ugly lawsuit whereby an agent tried to tell her clients that an architectural review wasn’t necessary any longer in a neighborhood. Ooooh, was she sorely mistaken! In the end she paid for the removal of the property that her clients had started to have built (ouch!) and she also listed the lot/property for them to resell – and my guess is that she wasn’t going to make much of a commission, if any, in the sale.
You can read the full story here.
I will say that frequently clients want the agent to have all the answers and they’ll run all kinds of crazy questions past you. In a lot of cases you have to educate your client as to what you can and cannot claim knowledge about and in what areas you have expertise. Clearly, in this gal’s case she didn’t have the right expertise and she should NEVER have assumed that the HOA was completely dead just because it hadn’t been having regular meetings, etc. I take the old CC&R info on older development projects as seriously as the new stuff and frequently I’ve pointed out items to clients that they just shrug off as unimportant.
If you are a buyer it is to your benefit to read everything that affects a property you may purchase. Don’t get lazy just because the search to find the house you like is over – this is the time to really scrutinize everything so you know you’ve made a good decision. Review title and ask questions.
If you’re the selling agent, I would suggest pulling preliminary title and have those underlying documents ready for review as soon as possible so that you can get past the issues that may come up as soon as you can. This will help your seller to get more quickly into a stronger, binding contract position.
