I found a home for sale by owner and asked the owner if he would agree to allow me to use my realtor for the transaction. He agreed to do so. When I brought the realtor to meet the owner and view the home, he said to me in front of the owner, " If you don't buy it I will." Well, it turned out that I didn't buy the property, and my realtor then put a bid on it and congratulated me on the goldmine I turned him onto. Any advice on what to do about this would help.

Why do you think you should do something about it? You did NOT buy the home but your Realtor decided to buy the property. What is the problem?
Why did you not buy the property?

Are you generally a vindictive person? Sorry to be so blunt, but really. What to DO about this?
1. Your agent was open and honest with you upfront. He liked the home. He would buy it IF YOU DID NOT.
2. You did not buy the property.
3. The agent, as he said he would, bought it.
4. The agent loves it.
5. You're not happy for the agent? Would you be happy for a friend who bought a house that you pointed out to the friend and DID NOT WANT FOR YOURSELF?

My advice on what to do is, send your agent a housewarming gift and keep looking for the home that suits YOUR needs.
--A

This forum needs a moderator so stuff like this can be deleted.

Ask your Realtor to take you out to lunch for finding him a "goldmine".

Why deleted? Just goes to show how stupid and vindictive the poster is!

The forum moderator says this is a legitimate question. The agent failed at their fiduciary responsibility, not because he bought the house but because he failed to try and negotiate the best possible terms for his client.

Saying what he said in front of the seller was stupid and clearly did not strengthen the negotiating position of his client.

Agreed. When I was an agent, I may well have acted in a similar way, but not in front of the seller. Hell, I've coached clients to look disappointed when leaving the "perfect home" just to keep the "cat in the bag".

Get Real!

You have absolutely NO idea how hard the agent attempted to negotiate the deal and you also have NO idea WHY the potential buyer decided NOT to buy the house because the poster FAILED to post that Absolutely Relevant Information.

I just love how you jump to conclusions without being in possession of all the FACTS and always attempt to blame the agents!

Based on the post as written the potential buyers is upset the agent bought the property that he passed on! Was the buyer unwilling to pay what the agent did? Was there another reason the potential buyer decided not to make an offer on the property. It is obvious that there was a deal here or the agent would not have bought the property.Did the potential buyer even make an offer on the property?

The agent waited till after his client had decided not to purchase the property before making an offer.

There is nothing here to support this statement. There is not enough data in this post to warrant a discussion. It is just venting. A newly registered with one post. There is just no information about what was said & done before during and after. The whole thing is posted for the benefit of the disgruntled.

Maybe the agent should have said "Wow at this price it is a great deal maybe we can try to get it for even less"... but not in front of the seller. Still not enough here to discuss.

In his defense I would say any active agent right now spends about 90% of their time hammering sellers to lower their price so with all his armor on maybe he got caught by the shock of one way below the market. One can get a little excited. It happens to me. Although lately they don't sell and next week you see an even better deal. That agent may end up eating it later. Mr. Sore Buyer may look like a genius later.

Thats the problem with rapid markets. Buyers look like heros when the values go up in a month and Buyers look like idiots when the market just keeps on dropping & dropping.

That agent would be smart to blow that house out in 60 days and make a quick profit.

Okay now you can delet this thread.

ok, since there was no agency relationship between you and your agent, maybe the agent should buy you breakfast.

Ok here goes. I admit that I didn't give enough information when I wrote this post. I was not able to put that much into it at the time, and just thought that maybe someone would give me some pointers in real estate transactions and ethics. Instead what I received were nothing but insults, which is why I deleted myself from the forum. Now here goes the whole story.
I was working with a realtor in Pa. and had gone out with him one Sunday to look at houses. I didn't see anything I liked. I told my agent about a house I had seen advertised on Craigslist. He said he would not be able to represent me on a For Sale By Owner. I drove over to see the house on my way home and fell in love with it. The seller was very agreeable and agreed to work with my realtor and pay his commission plus closing costs. I called my agent and he said great, come in tomorrow and we'll write up a contract. The next day we took the contract over to the house to meet with the owner. He said he needed two days to go over it as the house belonged to his mother and he was selling it for her.
As for my agent, he told me from the beginning that he would be representing me only, not the seller. When we arrived at the house, we sat down at the kitchen table with the seller to go over
the contract and my agent remarked," I love this house so much (my name) that if something happens and you don't buy it I will. I looked at him like are you for real.
After that I began voicing some of my concerns to the seller. I asked about the huge oak tree in his front yard-the roots were protruding so far out that it had lifted the sidewalk up considerably.
My agent spoke up and said," Don't worry about that, your homeowners insurance will cover it." The next thing that happened was that I asked the owner about the heater. He said it was about 40 years old, my agent remarked, " A heater only costs about $1000, and laughed.
When we were finally outside I asked my agent if he was serious about buying the house. He laughed and said yes. He said that if for some reason I couldn't get the house, he would buy it and lease it to me with an option to buy and that I could buy it back from him in a year.
The reason I couldn't buy that house was because I didn't have enough for a downpayment and my interest rate would have been too high. A few days went by and the seller called my agent to say that his mother wanted more money and wouldn't agree to paying the realtor's commission. Also, I got the good faith estimate from my mortgage company and the figures were much different than what he had originally stated. My realtor said it was a joke and that he was pulling a bait and switch on me. At that point I decided not to give in to the sellers demands for more money and told my realtor so and that I would not persue this any further. He called me a few weeks later to tell me that he had made an offer on the house and was congratulating me on My Find. I asked what he was planning on doing with it, and he did not mention leasing it to me, he said it was worth much more than the seller thought, so he would just flip it and make some money.
Now, I know this is long which is why I didn't put all the info. down at the first post.
However,I am disappointed in the professionals on this forum who chose to bad mouth me without asking for more information. Stupid, Vindictive!!
What a childish bunch of people you all are. If only you had said, hey we need more info to make a judgement on this. No wonder your profession has such a bad reputation. The only decent person on this forum is the moderator.

Loyalty - "A duty of loyalty is one of the most fundamental fiduciary duties owed by an agent to his principal. This duty obligates a real estate broker to act at all times solely in the best interests of his principal to the exclusion of all other interests, including the broker's own self-interest. A corollary of this duty of loyalty is a duty to avoid steadfastly any conflicts of interest that might compromise or dilute the broker's undivided loyalty to his principal's interests."
This pretty much sums it up.

Thank you so much for taking the time to post more detail.

I once had a friend who was a car dealer. I asked him to find me a good deal on a certain kind of car. He found one, I liked it and I bought it. I found out later I paid almost double what he bought it for. I was really upset and took him to small claims cout. The judge said "Well you knew he was in the business of making money buying & selling cars. You had no agreement with him to get paid for finding you a car so what did you expect?"

Real Estate Agents are not assumed public servants expected to act in the good will of the public. An agency relationship exists between a seller and broker. Agents in general have a duty to the seller as well through that agreement. Buyers have no one working in their interest unless they sign a buyers agency agreement. Your agent was mistaken that he could not represent you on a FSBO. He just did not know the tools to use. No agency agreement existed with anyone at the time. He should have worked out a Buyers Agency agreement with you before hand, instead he went in for a listing contract as that was probably the only way he knew how to get paid. It is also a much safer way to get paid because the house had to sell to somebody. An agency agreement with a buyer like having a contract with a ghost. On a FSBO they are like a two ghost contract.

Your post about fiduciary duties is only part of the story. You had no Agent-Principal agreement like Pikes Peak stated above.

This is not true in Illinois and it may not be true in Pennsylvania ethier. In Illinois an agency relationship is assumed depending on the actions of the agent and client, their need not be a written agreement. In either case, I would say that the agent had an ethical if not legal obligation to inform the client of his agency relationship to all parties.

The lack of empathy towards buyerbeware's experience shown by most of the agents on this forum is an example of why a majority of the public view real estate agents in the same light as used car dealers.

I for one, feel my role as a real estate agent has nothing in common with that of a car dealer.