Posted by Amber on December 29, 2004 at 20:50:18:
come buy my place in Hollister - Nice 20 acre ranch and only an hour into San Jose!
Dual Agency in California - Posted by Phil Johnson
Posted by Phil Johnson on December 20, 2004 at 16:36:12:
My girlfriend an I are trying to find a home in a very difficult California market right now and I have a question. We’ve been working with a buying agent, but not getting any of our offers accepted. Part of this seems to be due to the selling agents playing the dual agent game. If one agent is the listing agent for the house and we happen to use their partner as our buying agent, things seems to look a lot rosier. However, that means a different buying agent for each house we’re looking at. Is that illegal? It seems unethical to me and I’d rather not be doing it, but it’s their game.
The other part of the question is that we have to put in offers on different properties at the same time. We can’t offer on one and wait to see if it’s accepted because we’ll miss the presentation dates for three others in the meantime. The inventory is extremely slim around here right now, so missing a potential property is dangerous. We’re concerned about what kind of “outs” we can use if we happen to have more than one offer accepted. We can’t use a financing contingency because our offer won’t even be looked at. People are submitting totally clean, as-is offers and are impossible to compete with if we’re making multiple offers. The only thing we can use is a disclosure or report contingency, particularly for the sellers that aren’t paying for the reports themselves. It’s gotten that bad around here.
So, is there any other way we can plan for the event of having more than one offer accepted, without losing our sizeable deposit, and still remain competitive?
Re: Dual Agency in California - Posted by chet
Posted by chet on December 21, 2004 at 23:26:49:
Unless you sign an exclusive agreement w/ a buying agent, you can have a different agent for each house.
Why are you concerned about double representation? Just a general concern or is it more deeply rooted.
you said “We can’t use a financing contingency…” why not? I have had pre-approval letters submitted on the front end, but then the appraisal did come thru or something hinky happened w/ the loan.
There are tons of contingencies that one can use. I understand the “megan’s law” contingency run until the end of escrow.
Watch that you don’t get a reputation of accepting offers, and not following thru.
Good luck.
Re: Dual Agency in California - Posted by Phil Johnson
Posted by Phil Johnson on December 22, 2004 at 24:24:36:
We’ve spoken with some other people in the last day or so that have helped waylay our concerns about double representation. We don’t have an exclusive arrangement with anyone, so we’re ok.
As for the financing contingency… The way our market is right now, there’s so many people submitting totally clean offers with no contingencies at all (seriously) that a financing contingency doesn’t even get looked at unless the bid is exhorbitantly over the asking price. We actually overbid by 50k on a place and didn’t get it.
I don’t know about the Megan’s Law contingency. I gather that’s one in which if you find a sex offender in the area you can get out of the contract?
I’m not as concerned about my reputation right now as I’m not an investor. I’m just trying to get into a place to live. And a lot of the local agents are seeing accepted contracts cancelled because of multiple accepted offers. They’ve usually got 3 other people lined up behind them to snag the place anyway.
Thanks you for your comments. 
Re: Dual Agency in California - Posted by chet
Posted by chet on December 22, 2004 at 09:40:50:
What part of CA if you don’t mind saying.
I’m in the san jose are.
You’re right in that reguard w/ the financing contingency.
I offer 20% down, and the otheroffer was 5K less, but 50% down. the sellers didn’t wantto mess w/ me.
When I 1st moved to silicon valley from LA in’99 the market was that crazy, so be prepared to over bid.
Re: Dual Agency in California - Posted by Phil Johnson
Posted by Phil Johnson on December 22, 2004 at 11:14:41:
Yep, we’re in San Jose too. So you know exactly what’s going on. We’ve got close to 70% down and we’re still having trouble.
Re: Dual Agency in California - Posted by chet
Posted by chet on December 22, 2004 at 13:35:07:
the market seems to have slowed a little in the last couple months.
But depending on the area it can be very hot.
Re: Dual Agency in California - Posted by Phil Johnson
Posted by Phil Johnson on December 22, 2004 at 13:54:39:
It’s certainly slowed in terms of inventory. We’re hearing there’s about a third less houses on the market than usual for this time of year. Seems to be plenty of buyers though. We’ve got a bid going in this afternoon and they already have 16 offers. Crazy.