Present All Offers Immediately – Part 2

I just posted a blog post:  Present All Offers Immediately

Many agents do not seem to get the importance of this.  It is required by law here in Hawaii.

In the previous post I wrote about what happened when I bought the home we live in.  Since re-entering the industry I have had several agents not show offers to their clients that I presented for buyers.

I am currently representing a seller and am seeing it from the other side.  I had a buyer's agent; also broker present an offer on one of my listings.  I received the offer early last week.  It was signed a days before and was expired by two days by the time they transmitted it to us.  I got a call from his assistant letting me know it was coming.  I never heard from the actual agent.

The assistant indicated that their buyer's loved the home and wanted it real bad.  Two problems with the offer:

• It was expired and not executable
• It was not complete:
•             Missing signatures
•             Missing addendums
•             No loan letter
•             No earnest money check

I let the assistant know about the deficiencies in the paperwork and also said the offer was extremely weak.  By just reading the offer I would have never guessed their client was serious.  She asked that I please recommend to my client to not reject but to counter.

I met with my client and we did come back with a counter offer.  We cleaned up all the deficiencies in the original offer, raised the price to something more reasonable and gave them two days to accept it.

I got a call from the agent's assistant on Friday.  The counter was about to expire.  She said her broker was meeting with the buyers and their response may be a bit late getting back to us.

That was three days ago.  I spoke to the assistant yesterday and let her know we still have seen no sign of their response and I have not heard from the agent.  She then told me that he called me and I spoke to him.  I have never spoken to him, only his assistant.  She did not know the status of the offer ad gave me his cell number.  I left him a voice message yesterday and yet to hear from him.

If his clients signed a contract on Friday it is probably already expired.  What is going on here?  Is this agent just not following up or is he trying to steer his client away from this property?  Either way he is breaking the law.  In Hawaii you are required to present all offers immediately.

For those of us who consider themselves professionals, this is quite a problem.  I am trying to best represent my client, yet agents on the other side can put the sale of their home at risk because of poor service or worse.

UPDATE:  I just received the counter offer at 9:42 am today Tuesday May 29th.  The counter offer had an expiration of May 28th at 5:00pm.  Kind of hard to get a contract executed under those terms.