Home buyers, Whatever you do, DO NOT SIGN BUYER/REP with any realtor. You don't need a buyer/rep agreement to search home or put an offer on a house. The realtor know that they should earn your business by working hard for you. The buyer/rep agreement is only there to protect the cheating realtors and the bad realtors with no performance guarantees.
A good and reputable realtor will terminate the contract if the buyer dissatisfy with their service without having to harass you for unconstitutional fees. We learnt a good lesson. Especially, DO NOT sign buyer/rep with lance pate reality. Knowing 0 house x 3% = 0, Lance Pate hired an attorney friend to demand for door openning fees up front should we terminate the buyer/rep contract.
Just like any anxious home buyers, we were excited and we had put our trust and faith on a realtor thinking that the realtor will work for us, represent our interest and views, bargain for us, and find us a home. Never realized that we were officially trapped by this buyer/rep agreement.
Sounds funny... But once you signed the buyer/rep agreement, you are officially hired by the realtor. You get only the minimum service (plug in the search engine criteria and open the doors) and you did all the leg work in order to shared with the realtor the list of houses you find that interest you. Lance Pate doesn't care anything about getting a great deal for you. Once he figures out how deep you pocket is, he will push higher counter offer. He takes more time on set you up and design how to keep you working for his commission upon the buyer/rep agreement. Rather than focusing on and improving results and service, Mr. Pate's business practice has been unethical practice, fraudulent misleading, and harassing by intimitating.
There is no doubt that Mr. Pate has taken advantage on us for not knowing his separation from Coldwell Banker. All along, we thought that we signed the agreement with ColdWell Banker.in fact, Mr. Pate had us sign the agreement and intentionally avoided providing us a copy of the agreement with his SIGNATURE (in green ink) on it until 1/20/09. He now claims that the agreement was signed after his departure Coldwell Banker so he owns us now. He wrote to us that "I will not let you out of the agreement".
Even to this point today, Mr. Pate never did let us know regarding his employment separation with Coldwell Banker. When we initiated the termination due to his non-performance, Coldwell Banker told us that Mr. Pate was no longer employed there.
Mr. Pate rejected the TREC Termination Form and hired an attorney friend to settle with us upon fees. He said that the contract is binding and there is ABSOLUTELY no way he will let us out the agreement. We officially owe him commission should we find any houses regardless whether he put any work in or not.
We provided our ideas on how this realtor would accomplish improved results and services. We even treat him for lunch. After driving hundreds of miles of inter city commute four times, incurred hotel costs, and food expenses, it was us who provided to Mr. Pate our 20x houses we found from our own hours and hours physical drive-around. All we asked him was to open doors. Mr Pate has never sent any written confirmation of our offer. After all, the ONLY feedback we got from sending an offer, to the one house WE found, has been as plain as "Hi, they rejected the offer".
To us, it didn't matter which realtor gets the commission from our potential transaction. However, We aren't paying $400/hour for door openers either. Up to date, Mr. Pate hasn't found any houses that we'd like to make offer on.
Home Buyers, you have absolutely no gain from signing the buyer/rep contract. If you do need to sign one, please make sure you indicate that you CAN terminate the contract at any time unconditionally.
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