Guy E. Gimenez ABR, CRS, GRI - Broker - Austin Texas Homes (512-731-5613)

Last weekend, I agreed to show a few homes to a client whom I have known for about two years. Understand I'm not a fan of working weekends and seldom agree to do so. However, I decided if I was going to work a couple hours on a Saturday I wanted my wife to accompany me for the showings. During the drive to the first showing, my perverted mind hatched a dastardly plan.

My wife Mary, an avowed introvert, reluctantly agreed to pretend to be one of my new agents who was along to gain insight on interacting with buyer clients. Thankfully, my clients didn't know my wife but did know I have been married for almost 30 years. As my plan evolved in my sick mind, I told Mary that we were scheduled to view four homes and at each home, we would have to turn the heat up on my clients.

Here's how the plan played out.

Home One:

Upon meeting up with my clients, I immediately introduced Mary as Crystal Hill. (In order to be somewhat fair to my clients, I felt obliged to give them a hint. Mary's new name, Crystal Hill, is actually the name of the main street leading into the subdivision where our first showing took place.) As we walked through the home never more than a few feet from Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, I explained things that Crystal should look for when viewing homes. This kept the image of my broker/agent relationship right on track.

Home Two:

After arriving, I waited until we were inside the house and Mr. Buyer separated from Mrs. Buyer. Crystal and I were looking at a bedroom with Mr. Buyer when I allowed Crystal to walk in front of me while Mr. Buyer was just behind me and to my right. As Crystal exited the room, I patted her on her buttocks. Nothing too overt...just enough to warrant the attention of Mr. Buyer. We left that house without further physical contact between us. I was sure Mr. Buyer would say something to Mrs. Buyer as soon as they were alone.

Home Three:

This was where my clients would begin getting uncomfortable. As we viewed this home, again Mr. and Mrs. Buyer walked to different parts of the house. Crystal and I followed Mrs. Buyer this time. Again, while exiting a room just in front of Mrs. Buyer, I again affectionately patted Crystal's buttocks, although this time it was for a little longer and a little more affectionately. I also gave her a short hug. I knew it would not be possible for Mrs. Buyer to miss my advances on my new agent. I also knew she would definitely tell her husband about my actions while they were driving to the final home.

Home Four:

Now for our finale! Upon entering the final home, as expected, the buyers separated again. I couldn't take it anymore and caught Mr. Buyer in the master bathroom. I gave him a quick synopsis of my plan and pleaded with him to go along as Mrs. Buyer was intended as my main victim in this plan. Moments later we met up with the Mrs. Buyer in the kitchen. While I was about 8 feet apart from the wife and talking directly to her, Crystal casually walked up within inches of me. I quickly stopped my conversation with Mrs. Buyer and said to Crystal, "Hmmm, your perfume smells really nice." I then reached over and kissed her on the neck as Crystal only somewhat pushed me away and walked off. I quickly turned to Mrs. Buyer to watch her immediately turn her back to me with nothing more to say. If was at that point that none of us could hold it anymore and both Crystal and I and Mr. Buyer busted out laughing. I introduced Crystal not as my new agent, but as my wife. Mrs. Buyer laughed so hard that she almost lost bladder control. We all laughed for at least another 30 minutes as we talked about the inappropriate advances on my agent in the previous 3 houses.

Now I just have to watch for the payback...it will surely be coming soon.

UPDATE: For those who inquired, we did write an offer on the 4th house and it was accepted!

OK folks, sorry about this but I felt compelled to try and get an answer as to why some lenders do what they do.

Why is that some lenders want to be in charge of both sides of a transaction in addition to working the loan? Here's the scenario.

After the third missed closing date on a listing, my seller required the buyer use another lender or the closing date would not be extended again. The buyer agreed.

As often happens, the new lender called and explained how she was different than others, that she had been in business since dirt was formed and she would get this closed without any issues. Blah, blah, blah...same song, different verse. My client allowed her about three weeks to prove herself.

Ms. Lender calls one day to tell me the closing date had been moved up. I'm sorry Ms. Lender, I didn't realize you were with the government and could now change the terms of a contract in which you're not even named. Due to the previous lender's performance, my client respectfully declined to allow Ms. Lender to start moving the closing date without so much as an email or phone call with anyone on our end.

Then Ms. Lender calls to say that she had scheduled the closing for all parties and wanted to be sure my client knew what time she needed to be at the title company to sign documents. What? Since when does a lender schedule my client for a closing without my client's input. I simply laughed and told Ms. Lender that my client will let me know and I will let Ms. Lender know where and what time my client will be closing her side of the transaction. Ms. Lender wasn't happy with that answer.

Finally, as the closing date arrives, I received the HUD-1 and find a $240 charge to my seller for services of the lender's attorney. I immediately told the title company to remove the charge from my seller's side of the HUD. The lender's response was, "we always charge this." Sorry Ms. Lender, not this time. As if that bravado wasn't enough, Ms. Lender insists I (as listing agent) execute the FHA documents (Amendatory Clause and Real Estate Certification) and Ms. Lender also said she requires my client sign a Certification stating the home is not in a flood hazard area (the buyer chose to use the existing survey from 1994). Oh, and the seller must also sign several other lender documents per Ms. Lender.

I have yet to understand what makes some lenders feel they have the right to charge fees for services not rendered to a party and to intentionally place liability on a seller by "requiring" the execution of documents that have nothing to do with the seller side of the transaction.

The bottom line is this. I wasted many hours of my time arguing with the lender over the charges and documents when this should have been a non-issue from the very beginning. Fortunately neither I or my client chose to play along and we still closed as planned without increasing her liability.

If anyone has insight into this, please let me know. It just seems like an awful waste of time and energy.

Every time I think I've seen most every screwball thing possible, someone comes along to prove me wrong.

I recently had a rural home for sale which I got under contract very smoothly....that is until the lender decided she wanted to play the buyer agent's role too. This lender, whom I'll call Ms. Mortgage (and who coincidentally is also a real estate broker), called me one day out of the blue and without even asking me if I were busy, she commenced to put me on a conference call with the buyer's agent.

It seems Ms. Mortgage did not like some of the provisions that my client included in the contract, including, but not limited to, an AS-IS provision and the type of deed that was being offered (special vs. general). She told me there was no good reason for these provisions and that she's not sure she would accept these in the contract. What?

Anyway, I listened to Ms. Mortgage for a while as she pretended she was the buyer's agent and when she finished I simply told her that I understood her concerns but that the contract was effective and if she didn't agree with it, the buyer should seek another more competent lender. Whoooooopps. Obviously not good to bust up someone's ego just when they thought they had the upper hand and would be running the show.

Ms. Mortgage then said, "Listen to me...you need to understand the Golden Rule...he who has the gold makes the rules." My, my, I didn't realize Ms. Mortgage was funding this with her own money. I found her statement hysterical since I was representing the seller, not the buyer. I promptly explained this fact to her and apparently caught Ms. Mortgage off guard because she became silent. She then said FHA would probably have issues with the contract and that she'd be in touch. Of course, FHA had never had a problem with these provisions in previous contracts but Ms. Mortgage apparently apparently didn't want to hear that. After we hung up, the buyer's agent called to apologize because she said she had no idea that Ms. Mortgage was going to go off like that.

Of course the transaction closed without a hitch and I never heard back from Ms. Mortgage.

What we experience can often be considered a cruel teacher, but a teacher nonetheless.

I had a listing that was under contract and and failed to close per the contract as scheduled due to buyer/lender issues. I knew the buyer agent was out looking for her next victim...I mean client, so this transaction had been placed on the back burner. Apparently this agent (newbie) believed her obligation ended when the contract was executed and everything else would happen while on autopilot. It did not.

About a week later than originally scheduled, the buyers (who were local) did finally close their side of the deal but I was not given advance notice. And there was no reaon for me to attend the buyer side closing as my clients were in other states and had already signed their closing docs via a mail-out.

At 4:30pm about week later, it finally closed/funded and the buyer agent calls me wanting to know where the keys to the property are so her clients can get inside "their" house. Yes, she was mad at me from my previous questioning of her involvement in this transaction. Anyway, I told her the keys were left inside the house with the exception of the one key in the electronic lockbox which she had access to. Then she says, "My clients need to get inside so YOU need to meet them there and let them in." I told her that since I wasn't even told the closing would take place this day, and because I had other commitments, she could make the 1.25 hour drive in rush hour traffic to let them in or I would provide them the key early the next morning as I could not drop my other business to take care of hers. Needless to, things went from bad to worse in our conversation and I eventually ended it without her approval. She called back several times apparently in an attempt to continue this argument...I declined to answer.

This is when things went from bad to worse. She refused to fight rush hour traffic to service HER clients, so she apparently told them to have a locksmith remove the door knob, and put a new lock on. This is fine, but based on hearsay, she also told them to take my lockbox and place it inside the house. The next morning I arrived to find my lockbox missing so I contacted the buyer by phone. He wouldn't talk to me, but his girlfriend did. She began screaming at me that this was "THEIR" house (she was not even on the contract) and refused to give me my lockbox. As I had already seen my lockbox sitting inside (I peeked through the back window), I decided to file a theft report with the police department. I did so immediately and the officer who took my report also tried talking to the buyer, but got his girlfriend instead. She then started yelling at him. BIG MISTAKE! He went back to the house with me, looked inside and saw the lockbox. He forwarded his report to a veteran Detective, who also called and spoke with the girlfriend. Yep, she started screaming at him and then hung up on him. EVEN BIGGER MISTAKE. The Detective called me to see if these folks were just stupid or mentally challenged.

Well, within a couple of months, a warrant was issued the the buyer was arrested for a Class B theft. He was not happy. Perhaps he won't allow his girlfriend to do his talking in the future. He was taken to the County Jail and booked for theft. Within a couple of days of that I got a call from my broker at the time who had received a call from the buyer's attorney. They were threatening to sue, file a complaint with our real estate commission, call the President of the United States...you name it. I explained the situation and told him this was a police matter and that is who the attorney should contact.

The end result is that the Buyer spent a night or two in jail and he eventually had to pay me restitution for the lockbox (which was never subsequently found) and how has this arrest permanently on his record. All because he may have been given bad advice by a new agent.

Real estate is my second career...my first was law enforcement (17 years), so needless to say I thought I'd seen and heard it all. Until I got into real estate that is.

As a police officer, I pretty much kept to myself, did my job and went home. I didn't share much of my job with my family as I didn't see the need to give them an idea of just how disjointed some of society really is. I didn't hang around other cops, I didn't go drinking with them and I sure didn't share my personal thoughts and matters with them. I simply kept to myself.

So you might imagine my surprise when I left law enforcement and joined a national real estate company and found that other agents thought they had a right to know my most personal details. This was foreign to me. But to my disgust, I would have agents I just met ask me "how much have you netted this year." It was like the IRS was getting ready to go in for the kill. Once I realized this was a cultural thing for agents, I put my foot down and made sure folks knew not to dig into my personal life.

The last time it happened in the large office I was working form, a female agent, who was a known busybody and who had had a very good year and let everyone know it, put her hands on her hips and said, "so what you have made this year?" She must have caught me at a bad moment because she no sooner spewed her question before I responded loud enough for other agents nearby to hear, "What size bra do you wear?" She became very red and said "WHAT?" That's when I told her that we have apparently become very close friends who are willing to share our most intimate life details and I thought is was only fair that she share hers with me too. She was mad as a hornet and left the building to have a smoke and calm down while the other agents had a good laugh at her expense.

But I never could understand how or why someone thought they could ask me how much money I make, who I voted for or whether my sex life at home was sufficient. After all, I truly can not remember asking my doctor any of these questions and it wouldn't have ever crossed my mind to do so. Let's hope the newer agents arriving on scene now days have better ethical standards than many of their peers did.

What are you thoughts?