One example I remember down in L.A. was a property being sold as a result of a divorce. It appraised for and the agent’s best guesstimate was $1.3 Million. The man wanted to buy out the woman. The divorce decree, or court temp ruling pending final divorce, ordered that the property be listed for sale and the the man have the right to buy out the woman at the highest offer price. He had the right to match it without having to beat it.

The property had six offers within one to two hours of being listed. The market was popping higher and faster than we could imagine or guess at. The property sold for $400,000 over asking price, and the man couldn’t afford to buy it out at that price of $1.7 million. So the highest bidder, not the ex, got the property. It could have gone the other way…but still ethical and fair, I’d say.

I agree that anyone who is choosing to lie to me, is not worthy of me , or you. But if the seller still had the option to change the price, based on your marketing, with “the man in the bushes”, then it couldn’t have been “in contract and not available”. If the seller had a fully executed contract, there would be no reason to test the price, if it could not be changed. If it could be changed, then someone else still had the long shot at getting it, if the price was higher than the “man in the bushes” would pay.

Sometimes it is a family member who makes an offer much lower than fair market value, and there is no way to play it through except to list it. No reason the man in the bushes can’t be one of the bidders, and excluded or at a different rate.

I have seen this happen with offers from large institutional buyers who use very long periods with an esclation clause (I personally would never touch offers like these with a 10 foot pole but I have heard of many and actually seen one).

The people I smoked out where people who were: dishonest with me. Now I don’t want to work for a dishonest seller who lies to me, because they would probably want me to lie to others for them. Which was exactly the case when I “smoked them out,” in that they still wanted me to list the property and tell others that the property was available when it was in fact not available. I passed up the listing. Someone else took it.

If they already have it under contract there really is no valuable service I can perform for them, so I take their best interests at heart and tell them they don’t need me and they can save the money.

But like I said, putting a short time limit on it like you reccomend is smart. Smarter than 98% of agents out there. I would take the additional step of not listing it at all until it was sorted out, but depending on the seller’s needs (can he wait a week or two?) this might be on a case by case basis.

In any event, I recently submitted an offer which felt a lot like the seller was using our offer to get the best price from his “man in the bushes”. I am the Buyer’s Agent and represent the Buyer’s Best Interest (and not my own) and I feel badly for the buyer who may have been “used” in that manner. We will together, find another house, though we haven’t totally given up on this one yet. Waiting for it to get out of STI and go to pending. Maybe the Man in the Bushes will get buyer’s remorse and my client can still get the house. I’m hoping.

The whole tone of your comment makes me feel like you think it is all about you. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so. If the best thing for me to do for the seller, is flush out other potential buyers quickly to evaluate the price for the “man in the bushes”, then maybe I agree to do that for a flat fee. Whatever is best for my client, that is what I do. If I don’t want to do what he needs done in his best interest, then I decline the job at any price.

But your comment that you “smoked them out at the beginning” doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in your ability to represent people, treating them with the dignity and respect they deserve. You sound more like a salesman than someone who represents people for a living. That’s OK. You are clearly not alone. But it is hard for me to relate.

I once sold a property to a man in the bushes. I was anticipating the seller trying to perform some type of commissiondectomy so to head him off, I was going to use the infamous T.S. speech to let him know I would be quite the unwilling patient.

I only got as far as “I know you’re pretty dissapointed that after ALL THIS TIME and ALL THIS WORK that WE ended up selling the property to someone you already knew…” The seller interrupted that he “wasn’t disappointed at all. He had already offered to buy it from me before I listed it, at half the price.”

Had the seller mentioned the man in the bushes orginally, I probably would have excluded him for awhile. Had the seller thought the buyer was serious, he probably would have mentioned it. The competition with other buyers, caused by the agent’s advertising, can bring out an acceptable offer from the man in the bushes, in which case the agent deserves compensation.

There is also a different scenario, where the man in the bushes has a seceret option to buy and then the poor agent advertises and finds a buyer only to have the seller turn around and sell to the excluded party at that price. I have had people ask me to list with no time limit on the exclusion where I believe this was going on. I didn’t list the property and don’t feel bad, I smoked them out in the beginning.

You are correct in putting a time limit on there. I have done that in the past. Although now I just tell the person to give the so-called-buyer a week or two to decide and then come back to me and we list then with no exclusion. Keeps everything cleaner that way.

Usually the seller doesn’t think the man in the bushes is serious, or they wouldn’t be trying to list it anyway. Think about it, if you had a serious buyer already lined why would you go to an agent, somebody whose job it is to find a buyer?

I peeked in your blog again. Why are you spending so much time doing property searches? Doesn’t the mls system email you when a new listing comes on?