[tehlike]

sadly the answer is honor code.

There are also a lot of shenanigans realtors could be pulling.

Example: Few years ago, we wanted to buy a house, we made a bid for 2.6, the realtor said they would not accept anything less than 2.8 as this was their competing offer. We said no, the house sold for 2.4. I suspected the realtor might have been double dipping, or bluffing, i don't know. But what I do know is they did not present the offer to the seller.

(numbers are not exactly precise, but directionally and somewhat magnitude wise, it should be similar).

[bravoetch]

I had a similar issue. A put a full price cash offer on a place for 1.9. The seller said they had a competing offer that was higher and asked me to submit a new offer at 2.1. I declined, and said they are welcome to provide a written counter offer at 2.1. The reason they won't counter is that a new higher offer from any buyer (me) will trigger escalation clauses for other buyers offers. Dirty trick that screws over buyers, because sellers can see all offer details.

[FireBeyond]

> But what I do know is they did not present the offer to the buyer.

I believe in most states a real estate agent (I despise 'Realtor(TM)') is obliged to present an offer (at least by the Realtor's Code of Conduct/Membership Agreement).

Edited to add: I'm not sure if this refers to seller agents (who cannot hold back an offer from their client), or to buyer agents, presenting that to the seller side, or both. I think at least the first.

[nordsieck]

> I believe in most states a real estate agent (I despise 'Realtor(TM)') is obliged to present an offer

Sure. But enforcement is the soul of the law.

And it's pretty tough to catch stuff like that. Most people who put in offers and don't "win" aren't sitting around monitoring how much the winning bid ended up being.

[tehlike]

Exactly. In my case, I thought of finding the seller after sale was final, and ask if their agent presented my offer. He'd then maybe sue their agent.

I didn't care enough to pursue that route.

[weeblewobble]

Maybe there was something else unattractive about your offer and the 2.8 fell through? Happens all the time.

When I sold a house recently I took the second highest offer, because the highest offer came from someone out of state who had never set foot in the house

[crazygringo]

I don't understand, why was that a motivation for not taking the highest offer?

Is that associated with some kind of risk of the sale not closing, or other risk?

(Sorry if it's a dumb question with an obvious answer -- this is not my area of expertise.)

[weeblewobble]

Yes, the issue was increased risk of the buyer backing out. In which case I would get a few grand in earnest money and have to relist (or hope the other potential buyers haven’t found something else in the meantime and still want to go through with their offer).

The house had some warts, and the second highest bidders were locals who had toured the house and had it inspected. Closing was pretty much a lock.

[tehlike]

Realtor definitely didn't mention anything, but mentioned a higher offer, which definitely didn't end up happening.

It was a standard bay area offer - 20% down preapproval, no contingency, 4 weeks close, and could have been shorter.