Ethics or getting what you want?

So we put an offer on a condo last Friday.

The whole thing kind of snowballed, it’s funny. We’ve been talking about buying for a while but not doing a ton about it.

P sold his condo a few weeks ago, the sale went through last week. So now we had no reason not to get a bit more proactive about it. We have been with a realtor for a while, but hadn’t visited anything. Two weeks ago, we picked out a few of the listings to visit and figured we would start to get a feel for it. We had two we were interested in and two more that we figured we should see, more as comparison and because they are right near to our current location which we like.

In the end, the two we wanted to see where both unavailable (either accepted an offer or had received some) so we ended up visiting one of the ones that was listed for a while which we found interested but weren’t super enthused about. We visited the Sunday before last. We came out of it super impressed and a little confused. This was the first condo we’d visited, it’s well situated and we really liked everything about it, even though the building is on the older side and it’s clearly not a money maker (which is hardly the point). So we debated most of the week, talked it over with some friends and family and decided to make an offer on Friday. It’s been on the market since November, which is really long for the current economy in our city currently, the price had gone down at least twice, maybe even three time, so we felt ok with offering 22000 under the asking price (upon our realtor’s advice). We got a counteroffer for 10000 under the asking price on Saturday morning and re-countered with 15000 under the same day. They had until 5pm yesterday to get back to us.

About noon yesterday, I get a text from our realtor saying that their realtor had asked for an extension seeing as her clients were unable to sign before 10pm. We got suspicious but hoped maybe they were out for the weekend, which is fair enough, so we signed the extension. 10 pm comes and goes and no news. This morning we found out that they received another offer. So clearly we were lied to, that PISSES me off. I understand that they want to make money on their condo, fair enough, but what their realtor did is completely unethical.

P is inclined to reoffer at their original counteroffer, but I kind of don’t want to play that game. Technically our offer has expired, so we would have to make a new offer. Because we can’t know what the other offer was, I’m almost tempted to say screw it, I don’t want to reward that type of behaviour. Either they got an offer lower than ours (or on par with ours) and are hoping we’ll bump up, or they got a higher one, which I’m not willing to go above, so either way…

P has his heart pretty much set on this place, whereas I’m getting a lot less excited by it due to circumstances (I had been having doubts before this, not sure why). Am I being stubborn just on principle? I hate shady deals. I get the seller wanting to make some money on the sale, makes perfect sense, but there would have been a way to go about it without being deliberately deceitful. I’m pretty sure that this is coming from their realtor and not from the sellers themselves but the whole thing reeks.

As I was typing this, I got a call from my realtor, he suggests we go ahead and make a new offer at 10000$ below asking, which was the original counteroffer, he’s pissed about how the other realtor went about it, but thinks this is the only way we have a chance of getting the condo. Frankly at this point, I kind of don’t care if we get it or not, but P does so I’ll sign because it’s still a decent price. Let’s see what happens, but I’m really not happy about it, I hate feeling like I’m being manipulated! Ugh! I hate that this is souring the whole process which was kind of exciting up until this point.

Heck, if we don’t get it, we don’t get it. I’ve always been a believer in the the ‘things happen for a reason’ mantra. Maybe our new home just hasn’t freed up yet. We have our lease until next June anyway, so it’s not like it’s a rush to buy.

Guess we’ll see.