Just had a couple & real estate agent use coercion to try to extort money from us in a real estate transaction. That has to be illegal, right? Any real estate pros or lawyers out there that can clarify for me?
Essentially they refused to close on the date we requested. They stated we could a) close one week early, b) close three weeks later or c) close on the date we requested if we paid them $10,000.
9 comments:
I would call your state's real estate bureau or whatever it would be called there and find out. Yesterday. Sounds VERY suspicious to me.
If you have a written contract, it usually states "on or before **** date". If they tried to go past that, you would have a civil case against them. Otherwise, since you want to get your house sold, you need to just work it out with them.
Actually this is a house we are trying to purchase.
Or I guess I should have said that in past tense. We, not so polietly, told them we were no longer interested in their property.
Honestly, this does not surprise me at all. We have had to deal with agents, and attorneys, mediation, arbitration because of my mother's very long illness (11years) and recent death. We have to watch them all carefully. We read and reread everything before we sign it. We even take the papers home and go over them several times. If we have a question we finally have a good attorney in Indiana that knows his stuff. For a while we had to have a Michigan attorney and we had to hold his hand through everything. The work was totally on us. Best to you as you work your way through all this.
That doesn't surprise me at all! It seems everybody is pulling scams these days. I'd definitely be filing a complaint somewhere. Good luck!
Frankly, they thought you wanted the property bad enough that you'd bite. Glad you told them "no way". Even though not much may be done about it, I'd send a letter to the local board of realtors, and to the state realtor licensing agency. That's just not right, but I'd bet the agent has gotten away with it before and not been called on it.
Sorry, Christine. I apparently misunderstood the situation and thought you were already under contract. Thanks for setting me straight. I don't blame you one bit for walking away from that nonsense!
Report the agent and company to the Real Estate Board in your area.
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