Realtor agent sketchy bid situation?

Life is too short to be upset about this. Although there's a chance that the two colluded, you'll never be able to prove it. Filing a complaint to RECO does absolutely nothing for you except waste your time. And who knows, maybe they didn't collude and it was a fair deal.

Either way, you lost the house and even if final outcome is that you can get the house, would you even really want it now? There's plenty of houses on the market. Just stay patient and move on to the next. This one wasn't meant to be yours.

licenced wrote: ↑ Just so you know, in Ontario, a seller may them self disclose any information they choose but their Realtor by current law is forbidden from doing so in any form or fashion. Any disclosure to anything in a competing offer, even the date and time of an irrevocable by another buyer in a multiple offer scenario is a forbidden disclosure. If then the seller's agent disclosed anything to his father or tothe other buyer, they can be brought up on charges with RECO.

Even if directed to by the seller? Could the seller, on receipt of offers from A ($95) and B ($100), not tell his realtor "I'd rather deal with A, tell him if he ups his bid by $10, I'll accept"?

In this case I imagine the seller would be pretty happy that his agent and the buyer's agent are related; it would seem like there's less likelihood of trouble.

Manatus wrote: ↑ Even if directed to by the seller? Could the seller, on receipt of offers from A ($95) and B ($100), not tell his realtor "I'd rather deal with A, tell him if he ups his bid by $10, I'll accept"?

In this case I imagine the seller would be pretty happy that his agent and the buyer's agent are related; it would seem like there's less likelihood of trouble.

The seller can tell his agent anything and should. And yes the seller can direct the agent to try to get a buyer to improve, even by specific amounts. But that's normal negotiations and not what I was addressing. I was addressing what the agent cannot do -

The agent is governed by laws when trading in real estate and may not disclose to competing buyers the substance of any offer, that of course includes the price offered by any buyer.

The seller however is under no such constraint and if they decided to blurt out to buyer B, 'hey! Buyer A is offering 990 thousand,' there is nothing that can be done about that.

licenced wrote: ↑ $10k is $10k more than you offered. It could be fishy or it could be not. But there is more to an offer than money, it includes the closing date, warranties, representations, inclusions, exclusions, size of deposit even and can even hinge on whether or not an offer was presented in a professional or rude manner.

Just so you know, in Ontario, a seller may them self disclose any information they choose but their Realtor by current law is forbidden from doing so in any form or fashion. Any disclosure to anything in a competing offer, even the date and time of an irrevocable by another buyer in a multiple offer scenario is a forbidden disclosure. If then the seller's agent disclosed anything to his father or tothe other buyer, they can be brought up on charges with RECO.

What about the realtor just suggesting there is a higher bid without disclosing any details, is that forbidden too?

wjch wrote: ↑ It was an unusual procedure too - it was set to only accept offers on one day, and halfway through the day the listing agent sent out an email saying how many offers were in. At the deadline, they sent another email saying that there were X number of offers and you can amend your bid. Just driving up the price so their relative can add 10k to it and win the bid for maximum amount of gain.

This experience has now gained popularity and agents have used the covid lockdown etc to their advantage by moving the whole bidding thing virtual. It make the offer fishing game easier for them ..
Before when offers were presented , atleast there was some face to face contact and some decency or hesitation in lying to someone on the face. But now text messaging and emails are the tools of this rigged game.

Many agents won't like to hear this fact, but their profession is getting tarnished everyday with such moves. Their regulatory body has no intention to change and everything here is driven big money.

[OP] please do file the complaint and move on. Just waste a tiny bit of time on this and not give them anymore. Thanks for sharing your experience with all.

10K is huge. I lost bids as close as $500. I enjoyed these bidding games, its fun like buying that LottoMax ticket for free. Keep lowballing till you win the house at the price you like.

Friend bought a house before all these bidding wars. He paid the asking + $10 so the agent could advertise it as, "Sold over asking." Not sure how legit or the details of the agreement to do so but this is where it gets dodgy with manipulating numbers.

alanbrenton wrote: ↑ What about the realtor just suggesting there is a higher bid without disclosing any details, is that forbidden too?

no

wjch wrote: ↑ We put in an offer of about 1m on a house (outside GTA). No financing or home condition, and a flexible closing date for the seller.

We lose the bid, and the winning bid ends up being only 10k higher than our bid plus the buyer agent is the seller agent's father (they both work at the same brokerage of 2 people ).

Can't prove it for sure, obviously, but that has to be more than a coincidence. A viable complaint?

What's there to complain about? That their offer was higher?

Are you saying the seller may not have known the higher offer was from someone with a personal relationship with the selling agent?do you know this or just a guess?

wjch wrote: ↑ 10-12?

10-12 offers on the table and you were the 2nd highest? And the highest offer only beat yours by $10K in $1M property?

Okay enough said. I am gonna throw up.

StatsGuy wrote: ↑ What's there to complain about? That their offer was higher?

Are you saying the seller may not have known the higher offer was from someone with a personal relationship with the selling agent?do you know this or just a guess?

Doesn't really matter to the seller in the end. They sold their house for a good price.
All the seller agent has to do is emphasize a certain offer from a certain buyer agent and suddenly their family gets to keep another 28k in commission. A no-brainer. A brokerage with 2 people of the same direct family? If you believe they aren't sharing information then maybe they've got a bridge to sell you too... Nothing us plebs can really do though, it just becomes heresay. The only obvious thing would be the time of offer from the buyer agent vs my offer.

Not stressing about it anymore though. As other people have said, the house is sold and gone.

I find a few comments on here as if its a realtor sticking up for another realtor.
Yes t most likely did happen. Its common sense. Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it did not happen.
I fired two real estate agents. One who went and got high in Las Vegas and lost a deal.. another because he didn’t do anything.
Now I don’t pick a real estate agent unless I know somebody else has had him that I know and trust.

I sold my own house in the end in a week. No realtor…

otaknap wrote: ↑ Life is too short to be upset about this. Although there's a chance that the two colluded, you'll never be able to prove it. Filing a complaint to RECO does absolutely nothing for you except waste your time. And who knows, maybe they didn't collude and it was a fair deal.

Either way, you lost the house and even if final outcome is that you can get the house, would you even really want it now? There's plenty of houses on the market. Just stay patient and move on to the next. This one wasn't meant to be yours.

To add onto this, the whole real estate market and organization is flawed. In my opinion, the seller should be able to sell to whoever he/she wants at whatever price he or she wants and when multiple offers are involved, there should be an open bidding process where multiple parties should be able to see what others are offering and all parties should be allowed to go back to provide their best and final offer (after seeing the other offers). From my understanding, this is how it's done in Australia and it's the most transparent way to deal with it. Unfortunately, we are a long way from there because that would devalue the real estate profession and show that agents shouldn't be paid thousands of dollars (for at most, couple months worth of work). If we had an open auction process, there would be no pointing fingers at collusion or unfair treatment. If I had a higher offer and the seller still decided to sell to another buyer, then it was ultimately their choice. I don't really care if it's due to discrimination/prejudice, etc. - ultimately, the seller just didn't want to sell it to me and I have to accept that and I honestly wouldn't want a house if the seller didn't want to sell it to me for whatever reason. At least there would be no finger pointing on agents potentially colluding and pushing for a higher sale price followed by buyers or agents threatening to report to RECO, etc. The whole concept of unfair treatment is due to everything happening behind curtains and the lack of transparency.

We rationalize the increase in home prices in the GTA due to foreign investors, low interest rates, etc. but I think an additional huge contributor is the fact that home owners are automatically required to sell their homes for 3.0% to 5.0% more just so they can cover their real estate fees. On top of that of that, home owners would also need an increased sales price to cover the cost of land transfer taxes. The whole real estate industry is questionable. Until a couple of years ago, they finally permitted publishing sold prices on websites like housesigma. Prior to that, the general public was blind to this information and the real estate organizations fought against having this information published. That's just my long rant... haha.

otaknap wrote: ↑ To add onto this, the whole real estate market and organization is flawed. In my opinion, the seller should be able to sell to whoever he/she wants at whatever price he or she wants and when multiple offers are involved, there should be an open bidding process where multiple parties should be able to see what others are offering and all parties should be allowed to go back to provide their best and final offer (after seeing the other offers). From my understanding, this is how it's done in Australia...

This argument is tired and very flawed.

Auctions are legal in this country. Nothing is stopping aseller from selling their house via an auction. But they are not the wonderful process everyone incorrectly seems to think happens in Australia. Look it up anfd you;ll find thes ame problems and more.

Nothing stops a seller from selling their house privately and even showing buyers the offers of all others or some or part of favouring one buyer over another.

But agents are forbidden by law to do so when there are competing offers, period! And the MLS system was created by the real estate industry, is fully owned, operated and funded by the real estate industry, is a propprietary systemof the real estate industry and must follow the rules set out by industry and provincial authorities. Just like RFD is owned by Bell media or some such co, is funded, run by and controlled by Bell, you have the right to post in here but you do not have the right to sell anything outside of their permitted terms.

So then, stop whining about it! if you want an auction, then sell privately.

oasis100 wrote: ↑ shit happens, move on.

Shouldn't a realtor be suggesting to take the proper legal recourse through RECO?

djdestroyer wrote: ↑ Shouldn't a realtor be suggesting to take the proper legal recourse through RECO?

what will that accomplish for the OP? and what's there to complain about?

there's nothing but unsubstantiated allegations against two other agents that OP has no contract with or that the highest bid out of like 10 won the property?

licenced wrote: ↑ This argument is tired and very flawed.

Auctions are legal in this country. Nothing is stopping aseller from selling their house via an auction. But they are not the wonderful process everyone incorrectly seems to think happens in Australia. Look it up anfd you;ll find thes ame problems and more.

Nothing stops a seller from selling their house privately and even showing buyers the offers of all others or some or part of favouring one buyer over another.

But agents are forbidden by law to do so when there are competing offers, period! And the MLS system was created by the real estate industry, is fully owned, operated and funded by the real estate industry, is a propprietary systemof the real estate industry and must follow the rules set out by industry and provincial authorities. Just like RFD is owned by Bell media or some such co, is funded, run by and controlled by Bell, you have the right to post in here but you do not have the right to sell anything outside of their permitted terms.

So then, stop whining about it! if you want an auction, then sell privately.

What law forbids an agent to do so when there are competing offers? Is this real estate law or some other type of law? If real estate law, why can't they change the law to allow for more transparency? What benefit is there for the public and buyers? to my point, i think this "law" was made to create value for the real estate industry and not for the benefit of the general public (i.e. the homeowners and potential buyers). I might be wrong but it sounds to be me like you might be a real estate agent and please note that I'm just merely having a discussion and challenging why there isn't more transparency in the real estate industry. I'm not attacking you personally as I'm sure you didn't make the rules. I still believe agents deserve to be paid for the work. I just think they are being heavily overpaid for their skill set which is complimented by the industry forbidding an open auction style bid. 2.5% used to be fine when housing prices were significantly lower but the way houses are priced now, it's ridiculous that agents make anywhere from 10k to 25K on a million dollar house that virtually sells itself.

The reality is that when you sell privately, you don't get the same traffic. So instead a family member got the license and now we play within the rules of the game without paying the ridiculous fees. Saved 30K for a maximum of a week's worth of work.

Thank goodness for whoever fought to have sales prices publicly available. My hope is that they now fight to create an open auction style bid now.

StatsGuy wrote: ↑ what will that accomplish for the OP? and what's there to complain about?

there's nothing but unsubstantiated allegations against two other agents that OP has no contract with or that the highest bid out of like 10 won the property?

i think the only thing that needed to be disclosed by the seller agent is that the buyer agent was a relative. This seems to have been disclosed by the OP based on his first post.

As a result, the only allegations that can be made by the OP is that the two colluded and the seller agent to told the buyer agent what the OP was offering for which the buyer then increased the price by $10K. So yes, the allegations will be unsubstantiated and a waste of time. I think it's fair game for the seller agent to have told the buyer agent (the father) to revise the offer without disclosing dollar amounts or the offer won't be competitive. For which the buyer then added $10K. Again, no one knows what happened which is why multiple offers should be an open bidding process with all potential buyers given the opportunity to go back one last time to provide their best and final offer. And if OP offered $10K more but still lost, then so be it. The Seller didn't want to sell to him but at least you know there wasn't collusion.

wjch wrote: ↑ We put in an offer of about 1m on a house (outside GTA). No financing or home condition, and a flexible closing date for the seller.

We lose the bid, and the winning bid ends up being only 10k higher than our bid plus the buyer agent is the seller agent's father (they both work at the same brokerage of 2 people ).

Can't prove it for sure, obviously, but that has to be more than a coincidence. A viable complaint?

fire your agent, get another one, don't need to prove anything, you just ditch the guy simply set him back 30k $,

napoleonbot wrote: ↑ fire your agent, get another one, don't need to prove anything, you just ditch the guy simply set him back 30k $,

might not be his/her fault but be careful either way especially if you signed a BRA (buyers representation agreement). I've read horror stories where the agent sues the buyer for the lost commission when the buyer ended up buying a house with another agent.