HELP- Please help me understand if there is something here that may help us recoup our cost. We are easy going people and this is probably why we've been taken advantage of however we need to do something. I've included the time line of events below.

February 24th 2006:
We purchased a condo at auction. When the condo went into foreclosure, it was subject to inspection. Because the Condo was STI, we contacted the Agent to see if the buyer was still interested.We would have used our own agent if it wasn’t for the fact that this agent had a buyer and contract still in hand. Listing Agent emailed several net proceeds statements to us indicating what our profit would be if we took the current offer. Agent also stated the current contract would not go through without contributing $5k to buyers closing costs, so we agreed. After a mistake on the net proceeds statement, the agent ended up lower her cost to %1.

March 3rd, 2006:
Based upon the net proceeds statement, we met and signed a purchase and sales agreement at our home with the agent. (With the understanding that we were responsible for 6 months past HOA dues, property taxes, realtor/title fees). We stood to make 2k on this transaction. Agent
stated that she would get us a copy back. She even went as far as allowing us to see the Record of Title (300+pages) from a previously failed transaction to
indicate that no liens or special assessments were on record. What was not shared with us: Although she was aware of it and that will be demonstrated later, she never
mentioned the pending assessment amount.

March 8th 2006: Buyers signed the purchase and sales agreement.

March 9th 2006: Agent faxed us FORM 17(Seller disclosure statement). We complete the form as "Don't Know" responses and specifically wrote down "Never lived In".

March 14th 2006: Inspection took place.

March 16th 2006 am: We faxed the FORM 17 to our agent. On my fax cover sheet I stated “Let us know how things are progressing. Does the title company know this is a foreclosure? I don’t want to pay any more homeowner dues than I have to.” I never heard anything back.

March 16th 2006 pm: We received a letter in the mail which was from the HOA attorney stating we owed a total of $8k which took place on March 1st. At the same time we also received the inspection report on the property with a counter offer from the buyer. It requested for $1500 in carpet allowance.

March 17th 2006: We signed the counter offer (inspection) and denied the carpet allowance and wrote we would like the buyers to pay ½ of the special assessment that we were just informed of on the 16th. Buyers rejected request and wants to proceed with closing. At this time, we also signed the Agency Disclosure form (Which I think should have been one of the very first forms we signed)

March 18th 2006 to present: At various times my husband talked to listing agent about not going through with the closing and received no options or recommendations on how to get out of the contract or how to disclose to buyers that there is a special assessment they may be responsible
for.

March 23rd 2006: Since March 17th, I have been researching trying to find out why we were never informed of a special assessment pending. I had a different agent print our listing off of the NWMLS site. The listing agent had two listings. The first expired in Dec. 05 and on it said there were no special assessments. The next listing she did hadyes typed next to special assessments and the amount $5800 which indicates she was fully aware of the special assessment well before we signed contracts with her.

We wrote a letter to her broker with a list of things we feel this listing agent didn’t disclose to us. The broker is dealing with us directly but says we are ultimately responsible for following through to closing. We were faxed copies of the paperwork we never received previously which were the purchase and sales agreement, the condominium resale certificate from a previous agent and our listing agreement. After looking at the purchase and sales agreement, we noticed something else written in that we had not seen. According to our listing office, the buyer’s agent re-stated in writing “That buyers are responsible for all HOA dues and assessments” in writing even after WE HAD ALREADY checked the box that said “Buyers are responsible for all HOA/assessments…etc” Had they disclosed the information (Resale Certificate which they had from the prior transaction before auction or been advised that we need to order one) and returned our purchase and sell agreement allowing us to read for follow-up purposes, we could have avoided the apparent loss that we are being forced to take under contract.

To avoid possible fallout and cost associated with litigation from the buyer’s side, we are going to allow this to close. However is there any recourse we can take with the listing agent/broker to recoup our losses. We are upside down on this whole transaction and everyones made something except us.

Any suggestions.

The non disclosure of material fact of the special assessment known by the agent is an unlawfull act.
As soon as the owner realized that there is a special assessment, it should have been disclosed to the buyer and their agent. In the absence of the disclosure, they can be held liable.
During title and HOA document review by the buyer, the special assessment should have been disclosed, if not, buyer was responsible to investigate and perform due diligence for that possibility.

The bottom line is that the buyer and selling agent both new about the assessments but failed to disclose this until it was too late. When we tried to get out, our agent and broker told us that we were still bound by contract.