SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

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fanmail
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by fanmail »

Then why do sellers have to agree and sign the buyer's contract to make a sale a contractual agreement? Seems like an unnecessary step if all it takes is a buyer matching the listing price. The listing price is not a blank piece of paper for any buyer to just sign and buy at full price.
EddyB
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by EddyB »

john94549 wrote:EddyB, last I checked, You (and you alone) sign a listing agreement. It's your offer, not your realtor's. The realtor does not own the property and has no right to sell it. The realtor also has no right to claim an "asking price".
Well, no, a listing agreement (at least as I've signed, as a potential seller), only authorizes the agent to market the property, to solicit offers from buyers to present to the owner. The only relevance of the "listing price" in any contractual sense is that it establishes the amount on which the agent's commission will be calculated if the owner makes the property unavailable for sale during the contract's term. Perhaps you've signed listing agreements that are materially different from what I understand the term to mean (although given that the only listing agreement I've ever signed was to sell a house on the mid-Peninsula, this decade, I think my sample is relevant).

I know you want to reduce this to an advertisement by a retailer for the sale of a carbolic acid ball, where the ad includes all the material terms of an offer, but it's not.
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jfn111
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by jfn111 »

john94549 wrote:You realtors need some serious fact-checking. Point one: if you offer a property at price A, and it's accepted at said price, in writing, you have (as they said in Stanford Law school) a "deal". Even the Menlo-Atherton listing agreements are clear on this.

I had to chuckle. Presumably, real estate sales offers could state, in the listing box, "make offer". I did just that.
Hey, don't blame the Realtors. It would be an easier world if I could make a full price offer, for a client, and know it was a done deal. We work under the rules established by the Commerce Dept. :shock:
john94549
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by john94549 »

An offer can actually capture all the elements of an acceptance, as it were.
Should I offer to sell you three widgets at a dollar per widget, and you proffer three bucks, why do we not have a deal? Statutes of Frauds aside, explain to me in plain English why we don't have a deal. I cannot understand bidding wars.
EddyB
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by EddyB »

john94549 wrote:An offer can actually capture all the elements of an acceptance, as it were.
Should I offer to sell you three widgets at a dollar per widget, and you proffer three bucks, why do we not have a deal? Statutes of Frauds aside, explain to me in plain English why we don't have a deal.
In a "for sale by owner" situation, I might agree with you. In a situation where an agent, with no authority to sell or make an offer to sell, merely "lists" the property for consideration by buyers who may wish to present offers to buy (any such offer being the "offer" that an owner may choose to accept, reject or counter), it's just not a relevant analogy.
john94549
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by john94549 »

EddyB, my hypothetical assumes a willing seller, a willing buyer, a written listing price, and an offer (in writing) with no contingencies. Why do we not have a deal?
Last edited by john94549 on Sat Apr 02, 2016 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
EddyB
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by EddyB »

john94549 wrote:EddyB, my hypothetical assumes a willing seller, a willing buyer, a written listing price, and an offer with no contingencies. Why do we not have a deal?
Why do you think it's analogous to a real estate listing by an agent?
EddyB
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by EddyB »

EddyB wrote:
john94549 wrote:EddyB, my hypothetical assumes a willing seller, a willing buyer, a written listing price, and an offer with no contingencies. Why do we not have a deal?
Why do you think it's analogous to a real estate listing by an agent?
Also, I think you should read this case and consider that neither potential buyer even seems to have brought before the court the claim you think they could have made:

http://law.justia.com/cases/california/ ... 1/845.html
john94549
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Re: SF Bay Area Housing: Listing agent underpricing

Post by john94549 »

EddyB, your PM and my reply must have hit by now.

Best wishes,

John in Lafayette (94549, our ZIP code).
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