listing agent lied to delay offer

[realolman]

I found a house I wanted. The listing agent said it was a divorce case and he had to be present at all showings. We were the first showing, with our agent. I liked it lot, felt the price range was reasonable, and called my agent within a half hour
after leaving, and left a message that I wanted to make an offer.

She contacted me the next morning. I also told her that I had to go out of town for two days. I could and would have waited around long enough to make an offer before I left. She told me she contacted the listing agent, had worked with him many times, and he told her that he would consider the house "pending" and we could make the offer Saturday. My wife, active in the local real estate lending market, also knew the listing agent and considered him to be quite reputable.

Saturday, when making the offer, she told me that we needed to allow a 9 days for our offer to be accepted because the listing agent said it was a divorce, the husband was in Korea, and offers had to be reviewed by lawyers. Additionally he said he was going to be out of town all weekend and couldn't present the offer until Monday.

To make an already long story short, the listing agent showed the house twice Saturday and Sunday, did not present our offer until he had another offer on Thursday. He presented both offers late Thursday afternoon. The other offer was, according to him, for cash, two thousand dollars more than list price and ten thousand dollars more than ours.

He certainly ended up getting the seller more money than he would have gotten by negotiating in good faith with us, but I feel he unethically delayed accepting and presenting our offer and denied us the opportunity to negotiate, for the simple reason that he wanted the entire commission, rather than sharing it with the buyers agent.

I think his behaviour was certainly unethical, as he lied to us about several things that delayed our offer for an entire week after I wanted to make it.. Anything I can do ? I feel the house is gone, but I want to do something aboujt the listing agent. As I said to our agent . I thought they wanted to use the 9 days to collect signatures from Korea, not more offers.

[Nic71]

We are going through the same situation right now and we're about to file a complaint with our local "board or association of Realtors". The thing is, you're going to need all evidence you can get your hands on and a very specific time line of everything that you did/or said (if your talked on phone), or your agent, or the listing agent. There's also no guarantee to success, but it might makes you feel a little better (cause you did something) and it might give the listing agent a bad headache

This Page might be interesting to you: http://www.realtor.org/mempolweb.nsf/pages/code

# Standard of Practice 1-6

REALTORS® shall submit offers and counter-offers objectively and as quickly as possible. (Adopted 1/93, Amended 1/95)

We lost a house because of the Standard of Practice 1-8.

Good Luck!
Nic