A Tale of two agents.
Isn’t it funny how sometimes things just come together?
Remember that place I spoke of in my earlier post about how the agent (we’ll call her Agent Sweeps) of the last place I was trying to get was trying to pit us against another potential buyer? Well, when putting down the offer of this other place, we found out this agent (Agent Shadow) was the very agent Agent Sweeps was pitting up against. What a small world it is after all.
The story goes like this, Agent Shadow was showing a couple her place for sale and casually mentioned there was another place like this just a couple streets over for sale, too. The couple checked out that place and decided they liked this one better (who’d could blame them, I did, too). I’m not sure who their agent really was, but from my understanding Agent Shadow went ahead and represented them for this other place. They got their bid in to Agent Sweeps the day before us. So now you come to the previous drama I talked about in my previous post. Then comes to the final day, when we pulled out due to Agent Sweep’s flakiness. As it turned out, the owners of that place decided to take Agent Shadow’s client’s offer at 2pm that day. For some reason, when my agent called them at 3pm, Agent Shadow couldn’t straight up say no. She had to go some round about “well, it’s a hard choice. But my client has been leaning towards .. ” blah blah blah. That’s when my Agent just told her, you’re flaking out, we’re pulling out.
Now it comes to this place. We put in a bid to this place and my agent calls up Agent Shadow. They got to talking about the previous place and came to find out she was the very agent Agent Sweeps was pitting us again. Wow, small world after all. And talk about benefit; this agent got the contract of the last place which means she knows exactly what these places are selling for.
The story gets even more interesting now…It turns out this Agent Shadow and my agent use to work in the same office(s) (unsure on the details here — he was talking fast and brief). They didn’t know each other personally, but they knew a lot of the same people. They apparently had a nice talk exchanging stories of the office and just talking about how much of a flake Agent Sweeps was. Even Agent Shadow couldn’t believe some of the stuff she was doing or saying.
Any case, my agent also got the full story about the current place for sale. Another fun story; So, it turns out the current tenants are really tenants. They bought the place two years ago and started doing some work fixing it up (they replaced the floor and added a door, etc) but never completed it. The husband took a job as a truck driver and was always away. The wife, and my details are etchy on this one, decided to ride with him on his “adventures” driving the truck.
Well, now these people have an unused house they get back to no more than a couple times per month, they decided to sell it. They’ve already moved out before hand. This is beneficial for me. My agent asked about a quick closing date, and Agent Shadow informed him they would love a quick close (ding! bonus for me). Then my agent asked about the condition of the place, if they were going to fix anything up. Turns out they are not in town and have no plans to fix it up. Okay. Next question; will they accept a lower bid then due to needing to fix up. The answer was yet (ding again for me!).
Now we’re at where we are today; we have a bid in; Agent Shadow already knows they won’t accept that bid and we’re just waiting for a counter offer. My agent already knows my max bid for the place. Giving this agent is the one that sold the last place, my max bid should be perfectly acceptable — if we get up to it.
Another small thing … An old friend lives up in an area not to far from here, but a mile away, and he’s warned me about issues of crime, guns, etc. That got me a little concerned. I checked out the City of Dallas interactive crime map and from the most part, it looked okay. The stolen car part I’ll have to watch out about; there’s only one within the neighborhood itself. I don’t know how this compares to other places. I do know this area is the place I was l planning to move to, before I decided to buy a house, which shows many more problems; however, I’ve herd nothing but glowing reviews of that area. It is a really nice area, too; a place I would recommend others to check out. I plan on getting a insiders opinion sometime soon about the area I’ll be moving to as my father actually knows a couple people that lives within the very same community. Heck, from the sound of it, one of the people he knows is on the very same street I will be on.
Over all this deal looks like it might actually work. I hope it does and hope nobody comes in and under-balls us like we tried to do to them. Karma. I think we already paid for our karma when the last place decided not to take the bid. 
Oh yeah and that one other place I spoke of being a mile from my place — they are being drama queens again. The agent came back saying “We’ll do your offer” but when she tried to get the contract signed, the girl told her agent she’s not agreeing to it. Big drama queens. I’m so glad the negotiations didn’t go through originally.
Delusioned » Article » The light is shining through.:
[...] We finally got the deal closed last night, all verbal agreements with just a few initials required by myself on the document changes. I tell you, my agent’s just great. He played his cards well in the negotiations. He knew exactly what I was welling to go to and we knew exactly what the finished place we lost out on went for. Alright, so Agent Shadow, the one I post about in my previous post, had finally came back with a counter-offer. The counter was definitely too much; 117. He told her, not just no, but hell no and reminded her knows the value of the place as she just sold the last place. Given this is a fixer-upper, it’s worth much less. So, she called back her clients and got 116 from them. My agent still wasn’t going for it; “I know what my client’s bottom line is and you better to better than that,” as he put it. She called her clients again, dropped to 115. He still wasn’t going for it. He did say it’s better but still needs some work, “You’re still not close; I know he won’t go for that.” So, she calls her client back, gets them to drop 114 and then informed my agent if they dropped any lower, they would have to bring money to the closing. My agent was apparently just having a ball giving her a hard time; “Well, it’s still not at my client’s bottom line, but let me check with him and see what he says.” We already hit my bottom line. haha … I told my agent earlier that morning 114-115 was my cap. Talk about playing hard. That’s just awesome. So, we got the place for 114, up from my 109 bid but down from the 119,900 original price. For a point of reference, the last place sold at 118. [...]
Posted on November 2nd, 2006 at 10:36 am