So we are selling our house FSBO and we got a lowball offer from a buyer who had stopped by twice - once by themselves and once with their realtor. We made a counter offer and only reduced our price slightly and they then increased their offer by $20k and said that was their best offer. This was $5k below appraisal value and also $5k below what we were willing to go so after talking about it we decided to say that we would agree to their offer IF they agreed to pay for their own realtor (about $6k) - it seemed like they might have the cash since they are putting 20% down but that they couldn't get pre-approved for more than what they offered.
Anyways, they accepted and we got an email from their realtor that he was going to draw up the contract. This was on Saturday. On Monday, I got another email from their realtor saying that from now on, all contract work etc is going through their real estate attorney because the buyers don't have the funds to pay him. So they accepted the offer and agreed verbally to pay their agent and then waited 2 days until their contract with him was up and basically told him that they wouldn't pay him. While this is technically not our problem, I still feel really bad for the buyers' agent and I feel like what they did wasn't right. If you can't afford the house at the conditions in the contract, don't get it... On the other hand, we need to sell the house and this is our only offer so far, the closing date is perfect for us and the price is doable for us.
Re: Is it just me or is this really sketchy?
Yeah, we already thought about this and have decided that we are not fixing anything after inspection. We already did a lot of minor fixes around the house before putting it on the market, we are agreeing to sell below appraisal (at least the appraisal we got) and it is basically the lowest we can go. And it is a newer house so we aren't expecting anything major to be wrong.
If they won't agree, they are free to walk away.
Are you saying that they verbally agreed to pay their agent and then at the last minute told him they would not pay? Do you have it in writing that they agreed to pay? did they sign the contract with them listed as the ones paying the agent?
if you don't have it in writing, you may have a problem. Normally the commission comes out of the seller's portion. is there any chance the agent could go after you for the commission?
According to our attorney we are safe. All initial negotiations went through their agent and we never signed the original contract stating that we were responsible for realtors fees. Part of the last agreement was that they pay the commission (also went through their realtor). It is not stated in any contracts but was communicated directly between buyer and realtor and later emailed to us. Our attorney looked through all the paperwork and said that if the realtor goes after anyone, it will have to be the buyers.
As long as your lawyer says that their agent can't come back to you about the money then I wouldn't worry about it.
But I would make sure that you have everything else in writing with these people because they seem very suspicious and you don't want to have any other troubles.