It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes we observe someone paying too much for a property. How much is too much? Try $200,000 over what should be an $825,000 property. That’s right, we have silently observed a buyer paying $1,025,000 for a home close to our own which, even in the best of times, might have pushed $900,000. It is extraordinarily frustrating to watch this happen and wonder what it will take for this buyer to recover from such a mistake. Additionally, it hurts all Realtors and real estate agents when such a sale is allowed to occur without one of the two so-called professionals to take a stand and say, “this is just wrong”. As Realtors, we would very much like to intervene on behalf of common sense, but we are relegated to silence for fear of reprisal in the form of a charge of tortious interference. Tortious interference occurs when an agent interferes with another agent’s transaction. A seller or buyer that is party to such a transaction may also seek recourse against an agent that interferes.
However, there is nothing to prevent you from offering reasonable counsel to those you care about. In the case above, one would think that a relative or friend would have stepped in to say that the decision should be reconsidered.
Don’t be shy about asking your friends or family to take a look at what you are buying. Most agents won’t let you get hurt, but when a $30,000 commission is on the line, some agents forget their code of ethics, and will throw their buyer, their client that they are supposed to represent, under the bus.
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