We are selling our house in Ct and signed a contract with an agent 3 month ago.Since then he found 1 buyer by the MLS, I found 6 just by advertising.They all were preapproved and athusiastic to buy our house.First contract with Buyer1 terminated after 3 weeks.Buyer1 was 2 weeks late with inspection contingency.Our agent did not mention anything about earnest money and we had no clue about our rights.So we just asked buyer not to waist our time and give them 24 hours to decide if they are buying it or not.next day they backed out.We signed a nother contract couple days later with Buyer2.Three weeks later we found out that his loan did not get approved.A couple days later we signed a contract with Buyer3.17 days later she backed out.She said her interest rate was to high.
At this point we new something is not right.Buyers abandon the contract without any cosequences and our agent says there is nothing we can do.
2 days later I found Buyer4.We had 5 days until the contract terminates with our agent and asked the buyer to hold on for a couple of days.At this point we were affraid of forwarding any more buyers to our unreliable agent.But buyer did not wait and made an offer next day.As soon our agent got involved everything went wrong again.Buyer4 offered less than before and asked for closing cost.We did not accept the offer.Finally they agreed to pay what we agreed on before but still wanted us to pay their closing costs..That means our house has to be appraised for $10000 more.They are financing the whole amount+closig cost.We agreed but we are very nervous again.My questions;Shouldn't we receive and sign a termination of the contracts?Didn't we have to agree on the return of the earnest money?Can the agent return it 3 times without even mentioning it to us?What can we do about our agent who I beleive did not inform us about our rights and seemingly did not put reasonable effort to sell the house?Thanks a lot for any suggestion!

wow!I am sorry to say this but if what you say is true your agent needs to brush up on there contract writing skills big time,agents basically fill in the blanks but still need to know contingies of the contract.It doesn't matter if you have 10 buyers if they can't go through with the sale and obtain finanace to purchase your house there no good.On your buyers insist they put down earnest money that is non-refundable once the financing contingency is fulfilled or you could just put non-refundable deposit period.A buyer with no earnest money doing a 100 percent loan has no risk for them and every possible problem for you.Actually put in the writing that that the buyer has to give you there lender and phone number and that you can see there tri-merge credit report too determine chances of obtaining a loan.Buyers agents and buyers lie all the time about there financial capability hoping they can pull it out and get approved for the loan,then at the last second tell the seller they couldn't get approved.I am not going to go into all the details of contracts but your agent definitely is not qualifying these buyers.I would talk to there broker and say what has been happening is unacceptable and either you personally handle the transaction from now on or let us out of the contract.Have you had an appraisal yet if your house is priced conservatively a little under market you might could get that extra 10k to fly.If you house is priced at max market value forget it,it won't appraise then you would either have to take a seller financed note of 10k and have the buyer make payments to you on it or the buyer would have to make up the difference of 10k which 99 percent of the time the buyer has no money.good luck

not giving legal advice

Thanks for the advice!
All 4 Buyers put money down.First an initial deposit with their offer (between $1ooo-$3000) and then an additional $2000-$7000 when we accepted the offer and signed the contract.But honestly we had no idea that in some cases as a seller you can keep that money or a portion of it.I just found out couple days ago that that's what day call earnest money and that if the buyer does not have a good enough reason you as a seller has the right not to return it.Am I right about that?I think our agent should have atleast mention that, before returning the earnest money.I believe he misinformed us about our rights.After the 3rd Buyer left we were totally devastated.This is a vacant hosuse and costs $3000/month.We are paying 2 mortgages.So we asked our agent how we as sellers can be protected against these joker buyers.He said we can't do anything, and that any buyer has the right to back out without any consequences.I do not want to believe that this is true.
Buyer4 will have the appraisal tomorrow.If the house does not apprais for $10000 more they have the right to back out again.
I did not receive any calls from potential buyers for more than a week.The market around here changed so much.Fall is here.It will be extremely difficult to find buyers now.Who is responsible for our loss?Is there anything we can do to make our agent realize that he should not be playing games?

It all depends on your state but here are some things to consider:

Stop taking offers from buyers who cannot prove they are creditworthy. Why waste your time?

Contingencies are called contingencies because buyers are absolutely able to back out if any of these things aren't met. Until then, you are not entitled to any of the earnest money in my state.

You need to ask your agent on the next contract - what are the ways in which this buyer can back out? If you are not happy with those, don't accept the offer or counter changing things.

Frankly, I think it is time you sit down and look at a seller net sheet. If this home is costing you $3000 a month and causing tons of stress, why would you haggle over $10,000? As stated above, if your home is priced at max value and you are trying to get it to appraise $10,000 over, this is approaching loan fraud (buyer's choice). How long have you been on the market? All these offers and all these backouts are a sign - is there something about the home that later worries buyers? Would it be worth your peace of mind to take a lower price, get it sold and be done? Are you mentally able to hang in there to get "your price", even it takes a ton more time?

Good luck! You need to check with the laws in your state to find out how the above items apply or do not apply to you. What you could use is better communication with your agent.

Dear SUPER REALTOR,
can you please explain what a seller financed note is?Usually what kind of terms are reasonable
and how does it actually work?What would be the right and legal way to offer it to the buyer?I am trying to prepair myself for tomorrow when the apraisel result is back.
Don't you think that because this is the last chance for buyer to lower the price he is going to refuse taking our offer for seller finance?
Thanks again for listening!

You the seller have a note from the buyer that they are going to make x number of payments at x percentage interest rate until the 10,000 is paid off.You have a lien against the property so that if they don't feel like paying you and only the first mortgage you would have to be paid off when they sell in the future.Most sellers get tired of the finanaced note and an investor comes in and buys the note for you at a discount so you can have your money now.One of the pitfalls is if the buyers buys the house then ends up in foreclosure and the property's sold at the courthouse steps and only covers the first mortgage and your note gets wiped out.This is why some investors holding notes or the second mortgage companies will bid the property at auction.I am really sorry this happened to you i take pride being an agentin this industry and some of the horror stories posted on this forum gives all the reputable agents a bad name.I cannot comment on your individual situation without being there and knowing all the details but i wish you the best of luck in whatever decisions you make.

not giving legal advice

For Cherir,
first of all thank you for your advice.But....
our agent was the one who checked the buyers creditworthiness.He found all 4 buyers credits great.I understand that contigencies give the buyer the right to back out, but how come that the buyer can be 2 weeks late with his inspection cotingency date and still can leave the contract without any problem.Him beeing late costs us $1500.
Now I know that there are normally 2 reasons for backing out without any cosequences.1.inspection
2.financing
Our first buyer didn't even say what he wanted after the inspection was done.The only thing we knew that he wanted a roofer to check out the roof.Probably we would have fixed what needed to be fixed,or we would have lowered the price, but he did not give us the chance to even know what he wanted.After 2 weeks of wating for the roofer we had enough and gave him 24 hours to decide.That is when he backed out.We still don't know what his problem was and what he really wanted from us.So Ok. I don't have the right to keep the earnest money, but he has the right to waist our time with some redicoulus reason?
About the price:We had this house on the market for 3 months now.All together we had 7 offers in 3 months.5 of them was totally reasonable.Just $4-5000 under the asked price.What made us very happy.That is why we accepted them.The final offer, Buyer4, was a verbal offer for full price.The buyer told me how cheap this house is for him and seemed very enthusiastic about getting it.I had a chance to talk to him the next 2 days and he mentioned it again how lukcy he feels to finally find the right house for the right price.Next day the written offer arrived from the buyer's agent with offering $10000 less.I was very surprised.As soon as an agent joins in the offer is $10000 lower.
I believe that the 5 buyers high offers show that the price is right.Or maybe I am wrong?
Can someone please tell me that what is an average amount of reasonable offers for a house?Let's say in a 3 month timeframe.
We are eager to sell.So yes we are deffinetly considering lowering the price if it does not apprais for the right amount.But the truth is that we never wanted to apprais the house for $10000 more.I just wanted to sell the house for the amount we verbally agreed on with the buyer.By the way the house was already appraised for more than the asking price a couple weeks ago.Buyer2's bank appraised it.Unfortunately it is still less than the $10000 what Buyer4 wants.
Anyway.This forum is great!
Thank You for all of your suggestions!

Never, ever, ever accept anything verbally. Ever. If you don't have something in writing, you don't have anything.

verbal agreements are "non-enforceable" in a court of law.It's your word against there's as too what was actually said and not said.A typical sleazy buyer tactic call you say this house is cheap i am so excited and get the sellers hopes up so they lock them in,and then show up with a low-ball offer.It's kind of like you have a tv for sale in a classified ad for 400.A buyer calls you and says they are willing to pay 400 for it,they come over to your house to get it and say all i have is 340 will you still sell it to me?Buyers are liars don't bank on anything with terms and price unless they put it in writing and sign it,talk is cheap.good luck

Veseko, I am a new agent and I want to I'm sorry for what you are going through. However, you may want to tell your agent before accepting/presenting any offers to have the to have the offeree to include with their offer Fico scores and pre-qual. letter. If that's not included, you may not want to consider anything that he/she presents.

Hope that helps!