Steve Vartanian has become notorious in North Orange County California for constantly lying to buyers and other realtors about the availability of his listings. His motivation is to double end those listings with his own buyers at the detrement of his sellers and other agents and buyers. His sellers lose money because they never see the offers that would have come in had he not witheld the property from the market. I have personally witnessed him doing this and experienced it as a buyer trying to buy one of his listings. Once I forced him to present my offer he tried to extort money out of me to get me the deal.
Then while my home was for sale he wrote an offer stating that the buyer had written a $5000 deposit check and was "preapproved". Upon verification several days later it turned out that he had never collected any deposit and the buyer had never spoken to the lender and was not even prequalified. When confronted he tried to act innocent and oblivious but woudl never just admit that he flat out lied about some pretty pertinent information.
In another recent scenario he tried to force another realtor to withhold another offer that was over $100,000 more so that he could buy the home for a super low price, he told her that he would stop the clients foreclosure with his connections at BofA/countrywide only if she would "lose" the other offer. When she didn't do this for him, he complained and threw a fit as though he did nothing wrong. It's like he doesn't even realize that almost all of these actions seriously hurt buyers and sellers and cost everyone money and huge headaches. Not only are some of these acts against the law, but they are just plain wrong, but he doesn't get it. He seems to just move to whatever company will tolerate his behavior and allow it. Now he is at first team real estate and I hope they realize what he does and is doing and do not allow it any longer!
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