Problems with realtor

[coryk]

We are in the process of buying a house and selling our current house in Minnesota. For the home we are purchasing we entered into a dual agency contract. The closing date was scheduled for 1-15-01. The purchase agreement was contingent on the sale of our current home which we accepted a purchase agreement for on 1-8-01. On 1-9-01 we filed papers for removal of contingency. We were notified by our agent that the sellers were looking at another offer but in our understanding no new offer could be accepted now that the contingency was removed. After having our agreement reviewed by an attorney he found a date of 12-15-00 after which the purchase agreement was to become null and void and a cancellation notice and refund of earnest money should have been delivered to us. We feel our realtor should have notified us of this deadline and given us the opportunity to either renegotiate a date with the seller, remove the contingency all together or back out of the agreement and take our house off the market. Our feeling is that had we been able to negotiate a new date in December the seller would have accepted because no other offers had been presented at that point. We then would have been able to remove the contingency in time and the house would be ours. We also would not have to deal with a buyer for our house that has gotten out of their current lease and will now be forced to find a new place to live. Does she share some fault in this and is there anything we can do?

 

[David J. Miller]

Yes she does. She was acting as your agent and has a fiduciary responsibility to communicate this information to you. My question to you is since you have asked an attorney to review your purchase agreement, why don't you pose these questions to him/her. Answers on this site will surely result in more questions and an attorney who is intimate with your situation would certainly be of more use to you than someone who doesn't.

You may want to ask your attorney whether the sellers failure to cancel the agreement once 12-15-00 came and went and the contingency was not satisfied has any bearing on the fact that you now have satisfied the contingency, presumeably prior to the new offer.

 

[HomeGuru]

Here is the problem. You agent is not your agent. In a dual agency scenario, the agent is only representing the Seller. You are only the customer of the agent. In any case, this agent has violated various dual agency laws and Code of Ethics.