Internet Scams are Hitting Real Estate, too!

 

The weather was good this morning, so Nicolas got an early start on the lawn before the rain moved in.  It seemed to be a common theme – with 3 of the neighbors out on their mowers, too!

The weather is warming up, and my lilacs are just starting to bloom.

I couldn’t resist cutting some to bring inside, and now my whole house smells like lilac!  I love that smell!

Well, we’ve had a couple of crazy weeks around here . . . we thought we had our house sold, and were making some really good progress in purging stuff.  The deal was a cash offer, very close to our asking price, with the buyer relocating from out of the country and wanted much of our stuff . . . too good to be true, right??

We had that thought running through our heads, but our realtor kept assuring us that all was good, and everything was in order.  There was some confusion over the earnest money, and we still had some uneasiness about not having met this buyer, but he was supposed to be arriving in a few weeks, and we trusted our realtor.  Then, all of a sudden, he (the agent) is not returning our phone calls and emails, and we find out that he left our house on the market, but wasn’t returning calls of other prospective buyers, either.  We finally showed up at his broker’s office, and tried to get to the bottom of the situation.  The broker made some calls and found out that the offer was determined to be a scam . . . I guess it wasn’t a priority to get that information to us!

We were incredibly upset, and felt betrayed and mislead by our agent, who was supposed to be working for us!  After a few more meetings with the broker, and some guidance from a couple of real estate lawyers, we’re getting some restitution from the agent . . . so at least that’s some good news . . . but we’re back to square one as far as selling the house, and we now have several rooms without furniture!

We did have one showing while all this was going on, so we’re dealing with that buyer as “for sale by owner” and trying to bring it together.  If it doesn’t work out, we’ll re-list with a new realtor . . . but we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’re able to work it out!

Just goes to show you that no transaction is safe from scams, and you can’t trust anyone to look out for your best interest – you have to do it yourself!