f13.net

If you want to hear how fucked up the bank-owned real estate system is, read my story (long, but good)!

Last May, my wife and I put in an offer to buy a property that was placed for short sale (meaning the sale amount would be less than the amount owed on the house).  We offered %5 over asking price.  The offer was accepted by the seller and went to the bank for approval.

The approval process dragged on for 6 months.  They went from negotiator to negotiator, from department to department, back and forth, with no status other than 'it's almost done'.  Fast forward to last month, when the property was foreclosed, for 25% less than our asking price.  So the owners, who went on good faith to try and sell the property and recover as much of what the bank was owed now have ruined credit scores for no reason whatsoever.

But the story gets even better:  we found out that once the bank took over the property, they sent it to a listing agent who specializes in getting rid of REO properties.  The property goes on the listing service and we caught it within one hour.  Our agent had a new contract drawn up with 45 minutes and tried to contact the agent to present the offer.

The agent's office tells our agent that the property already had an offer, and the current offer was in the process of being accepted by the bank.  Our agent says he would like to present our offer to the bank for consideration, and the listing office tells our agent this would be acceptable.  Our agent tried to fax the offer to the agent, but was told that 'their email and fax were down, and they would not be able to accept offers today".  Our agent said he would come and present the offer in person but was told there would be nobody at the office to accept the offer until the following week!

Our agent then drove to the listing agents office unannounced, which was a little two room hole in the back of a shopping center.  The listing agent was inside the office (we had his picture from his web site), but when our agent opened the door, the listing agent ran back and disappeared through another door.  Our agent was told by the secretary that the listing agent would not be in the office, and to try again next week.  He left the offer and the secretary said she would present it when she saw the listing agent.

Just for fun, we had another agent we work with call up the office and ask to speak to the listing agent about other properties.  She was promptly connected, and was told the agent would be there all day to discuss his listings!

It seems to me what is happening here is that these REO property dealers are privy to see cheaper properties coming onto the market as the result of banks dumping them to recover their loans.  We think the agent went to the property, saw it was clean, and decided to buy the property himself, and serve as both the buyer's agent and sellers agent so he could collect both sides of the commission.  Or got someone he knew to buy the property so he could turn around and flip it.  It seems he has no intention of presenting legitimate offers to the bank.

I don't know real estate law, but this seems illegal to me.  I always thought that listing agents were obligated to present all offers to their seller, whether the terms were better or worse for their own personal benefit.  I wish there was someway I could contact the bank directly to let them know we tried to present an offer but the agent refused to accept it.  It seems very fishy to me that somehow some other person could have drawn up an offer faster, had it to the listing agent, who submitted it to the bank for approval all within a 2 hour window.  I think he must have had the purchase contract from himself or someone he knew all drawn up and ready to go for when it hit the public listings, and that he would just tell anyone who called that the property was sold.

What would you all do in this situation?  I don't know if it's worth it to pay a $10k retainer to a lawyer to go after this guy, but if all the bank sees are his own personal offers they have no way to know that they could have potentially gotten the property for a higher price.

1)Go watch The Sting, every episode of Hustle, and every other con movie you can get your hands on.
2)....
3)Profit!

I have to be real careful here because of rules about giving legal advice. I AM NOT ACTING AS YOUR ATTORNEY AND WE HAVE NO ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP.

IN GENERAL, an agent has a fiduciary duty to his principal to present all offers and act in the principal's interest rather than the agent's own self-interest.

If you think you are being screwed here, going to an attorney is pretty much your only answer. I highly doubt one would want a 10k retainer. You could probably pay a few hundred bucks for an attorney to write a letter directly to the bank.

Why are you surprised by this?

My thought was to go to the police. It sounds that illegal.

Stunts like that beg for a good attorney's attention. I dealt with a listing agent who was known for playing games, and indeed tried a couple stunts in my deal...until my lawyer called him. I even think my agent was in on it, so I went rogue and kept him out of the loop when I brought my attorney in. Helps that his legal secretary that did all the real estate paperwork is best friends with my mother, but the lawyer was very good and worth every penny.

Fees were much more in line with Ab's thoughts of a few hundred bucks, and they did a lion share of the paperwork once my agent found out, because he basically never worked after that. I even thought of suing him for the commission, the pile of shit. Had a gab session with both lawyers after we did the deal (just the three of us), and I told them both that they deserved the commission money, which was about three times what each of them made, and they ended up doing the bulk of the work.

Real estate is insane. But yeah, the listing agent should've signed a contract saying the stuff about self-interest Ab mentioned. There was some stuff like that in the sheafs I went through (I actually read everything!).

Welcome to real estate.  Everyone thinks the rules have changed since the boom and fucktardedly high prices, but NOT.  This was going on back in 2004 when we were trying to buy our current house.  We put offers in on 10 different properties.  10 FUCKING PROPERTIES in a month.  Not a single one ever returned our phone calls or even gave us much info or even the time of day on the place beyond what the MLS and a walkthrough showed.  I swear it was like the real estate agents were just there to hang out in other people's houses on Saturdays.  The house we did end up with had some seriously shady stuff going on.  I overheard the owner talking to his agent and said his agent WILL not screw up this deal as he NEEDS the cash from this house NOW that he is building in Las Vegas, and that 9 months to sell a house with 4 deals falling through is NOT acceptable in the market.  Their agent had prison tattoos on his arm and gold jewelry everywhere, and we found out from our agent that of the last 6 properties he had listed, HE ended up buying 5 of them!  For cash too apparently.  He was jerking his sellers around and ensuring the deals would fall through - either not presenting the offer to the bank or just flat out ignoring it until the potential buyer got fed up and bailed - and then he would offer to buy it at a reduced price some 4-6 months later.  Jerkoff.

My parents had a similar deal with their house that they bought in the bust of 1986.  The next door neighbor sued the owners of the house they bought and made them sign all sorts of "will not sue" legal papers regarding his cheating of the survey lines (he ran the main water line for the neighbor's house on my parents property by about 4 feet, built on their property, basically avoided paying his taxes, etc).  The sheer amount of houses we looked at back then and the offers that were made and the banks\agents never returning calls was fucking retarded.  Since the economy in town had taken a giant fall in the shitter due to oil prices tanking and businesses being shuttered left and right, you would think the bank repos and up-to-their-necks-in-debt owners would be anxious to unload the properties to people who could afford it, but hell no.  They play their same stupid fucking games regardless, it's only money on paper, right?

Can you tell I hate buying houses?  This is the same tactics that car salesmen use trying to make you feel like you are insignificant and they are doing you a favor by talking to you and selling you some turd.

Thanks for the comments.

What really makes me sad about this whole thing is thinking about the original sellers:  they went and did *everything* the bank asked of them to try and get out of the property according to the rules of the bank.  They went through all of the correct paperwork, but in the end the bank just didn't care to close the deal, and foreclosed *with an higher offer on the table*!  The husband apparently fell ill and lost his job and they couldn't afford the payments any longer.

It's like if you owed $10k on a car, and you had someone willing to pay you $9k for it, and you agreed to give the $9k to the bank to cover as much of the original loan as possible.  Then the bank turns around and says, "sorry, we're going to destroy your credit for a decade, then ask someone else to give us $5k for the car at auction instead".

These are the same motherfuckers we just bailed out, who think its better to take a $100k loss on a piece of property instead of a $10k loss, so they wouldn't have to fill out two extra sheets of paper and return a few phone calls.

Another interesting tidbit on a related topic:  the loan consultant I work with says that all of the existing extensions to the confirming loan limits are set to expire at the end of this year, and that the new limits have not yet been set.  What this means at this point is that basically, there are no new loan programs to borrow any more than $417k, starting in January of this year, that are eligible to be purchased by Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac.  Any programs that are offered will be at huge interest rate penalties due to the risk (she was talking in the 8-10% range for loan amounts over $417k).

Has anyone else heard about this?

If this is true, this is going to quickly deflate the high end of the market, by limiting purchases in mid-range to high-end homes to those who have a ton of free cash on hand to bring their loan amount down to the conforming loan limit.  People who have half a million dollars in cash are not the kind of people who are going to be struggling to find financing, however there's a huge chunk of middle income people who are just going to be priced out completely, even if they make enough to cover the mortgage payment, due to the requirement of needing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to put down in most of the metro areas of the country.

I think the implosion is about to accelerate!

Having not read the thread past this point, I'd just like to thank you, Sky, for the whole "did the most work and got shit dough for it" line. While seller's attorneys can collect title fees in some states, buyer's attorneys get at best about $500 (at least in Chicago) for a shitload of cat-herding and deal-nursing.

The fact that shitbag realtors can make so much dough in commission pissed me off the entire time I was working with them on real estate deals. The market crashing has actually helped reduce the amount of bile-filled hate in my life.

Wouldn't the seller have any legal recourse after getting jerked around for 6 months by their own bank? If they had consulted an attorney, I wonder if things would have turned out different?

The problem with getting fucked because you're broke is that you're broke; if you weren't then you probably wouldn't be getting fucked, and even if you were you would have resources available to try to stop getting fucked quite so hard.

Well, if the above talk and my own experience is any indication, consultations are free/very cheap.

I just bought a house, and the banks were shits, every last one.  Found a nice townhouse in a decent location for too much money, offered much less money, haggled a bit, came to about the price I'd actually expected to get it for.  Got a pre-approval on a loan from Suntrust, signed all the paperwork, hands were shook all around, and we settled into working out the loan details.

At this point, things descended into the last half hour of Event Horizon.  The bank started asking for more and more obscure paperwork and financial data.  Because I own my own business, I'd been paying myself just enough to make ends meet, leaving the rest of the money in the LLC for stuff like purchasing items to have in stock.  I've been steadily ramping up my take-home money as things got off the ground, but my income from a couple years ago looked pretty dreadful.  So what should happen?  Clearly, the bank should point at my 2006 income and reject the loan, a month later.

At this point, there was just a week left in the purchase agreement for me to cough up the money.  I got ahold of my agent, had him ask for some more time.  The sellers were gracious enough about it, so I went looking for another loan.  In a bit of a hurry.  To help grease the wheels a bit, I got my parents to agree to co-sign.  So now I'm scanning and faxing scores more documents, my financial stuff and theirs, to Chase bank.  As before, there's an immediate pre-approval.  Documents fly, time passes.  And, just like Suntrust, that initial burst of communication turned into dead silence the second the loan hit the underwriter, followed by requests for more financial stuff.  Eventually, the bank demanded the financial data for a company that my parents are partners in with my aunt and uncle, a tiny LLC that exists solely to own and rent two homes in Georgia and split the profits.  My parents didn't have it, my uncle who actually does the tax returns said, 'All our personal financial records are in that, there's no way I'm handing it over to some random person at a random bank.'  So the bank declined the loan.

Now, understand here, everyone involved in the loan has perfect 790+ credit, no debt, and my parents could've up and written a check for the condo, had they felt like it.  At this point, we're a week past the date when we should've already closed the deal, no loan, and the seller's agent admits that the seller is on the brink of foreclosure and is gonna lose the house in two weeks.

So now we go looking for a THIRD loan.  This time, all stops are out.  We try for an FHA loan, in which I pay an extra five grand over five years in insurance fees to the government, in exchange for the government's assurance that, should I bail on the loan, they will take the property and pay the bank their money.  So, let's review:

I am on the hook for the loan.  If I cannot pay, the bank can take my stuff, and my home, which isn't exactly on wheels or anything, so I can't vanish out of state with it in the middle of the night.  The home was actually appraised as being worth more than what I was paying for it.
I was putting down 20% up front.  So even if I did skip out on the loan, and even if the bank did have to sell the house on the market, it would be difficult for them not to come out ahead.
My parents were also on the hook for the loan.  If I couldn't pay, they'd have to, and the bank could come after their stuff in addition to mine.
The United States government was being paid (by me, not the bank) to make sure that the bank (and not me) would be able to quickly get their money back, if, somehow, both I and my parents failed to pay.

That loan was also declined, despite every possible safeguard being in place for the security of the bank.  This time, though, the underwriter let slip that 'they didn't think they could sell the loan with the banks all scared'.  So, it wasn't that we couldn't repay the loan, it was that the bank was trying to pull the same loan-brokering crap that led to the collapse of the mortgage market in the first place.

At which point, my grandmother stepped in and bought the house, in cash, on the day that the banks were going to foreclose on it.  Now we're waiting on the 2008 tax return season to start so I can submit my 2008 income to the government and have the tax returns as proof of it to show to the bankers.  Some friends who know people in finance have pointed me towards banks that actually give loans to collect interest rather than to try to sell to other banks, who will hopefully be more receptive.  Once that's all done, I'm buying the place from my grandmother.

We're basically having to jump through a whole raft of hoops, on fire, with sharks swimming around underneath, just to go through a routine real estate purchase.  My parents, who've bought a goodly number of homes, complained that they have never run across even a fraction as many hassles in the process before.  And this was all after the government bailout of the banks.  Letters have been written to appropriate representatives in congress and the senate to make sure they know that our friendly banks haven't stopped their douchebaggery.

The worst people in the world aren't lawyers, they're the folks involved with real estate and cars.

The lawyers just got us there.

I know real estate law. I am a realtor.

In Virginia at least[and very very likely every other state in the Union] an agent is required by law to present all offers to the seller, whether they are beneficial to him or not.

There may be a specific provision regarding "received" which is why he went out of his way to not talk to you. This is the case with completed offers. E.G. If you put a contract on a home, and the seller accepts it. The contract is not binding until its back in your hands. Which means that if you write a contract and decide to not honor it after the other guy has signed, you can back out simply by not touching the contract[you are technically, not accepting it back]

I very much doubt that his local real estate board would side with him on this issue though. If you press the matter, expect him to lose his license and be liable for any damages caused to his clients[I.E. the bank]

ed: standard "not acting as your agent when giving you this advise disclaimer"


that loan brokering crap did not lead to the collapse of the mortgage market. However, even if they could not sell it they probably should have accepted a loan to keep on their books if it was a good deal. That much was just bad business.


That doesn't sit right with me, there is no reason the bank is going to willfully lose money. Something wasn't on the up and up with the other offer. The bank is not going to willingly lose money.

My belief sprang from this Samprimary-ish revelation: http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true

I am of course not in any way a financial or real estate expert, but it looked stupid enough to be the truth.

Its almost stupid enough to be the truth.

The truth is that CDO's have existed for a long long time and are generally not a problem. Banks sell their mortgages to financial institutions[note: this rule was changed in 1999, banks no longer have to sell their mortgages before securitizing] which securitize the loans. Basically what that means is that they take a whole bunch of loans and bundle them all together.

Each party does this for a number of different reasons

1. A loan holds a significant amount of capital when its given. This capital can not be used for other things. If you are able to sell the loan, and make a profit on selling it[which you are likely to], then you can return that capital immediately and make more loans. Think of it like this. If i have 10 dollars i can make 10 dollars worth of loans. But if i then sell that 10 dollars of loans for 10.5 dollars. I can turn around and make another 10.5 dollars worth of loans. Since making a loan is not a free process, this has value and generates business for the bank and for investors.

2. Investors don't want to own individual loans because individual loans can go bad. If you hold 200k in debt and it goes bad, you're screwed. Now, while the default rate is low, since the risk of loss is so severe many people are unwilling to take it. But if a loan is bundled up with a lot of other loans, any one of them can go bad and the package is still good. Now if i am an investor, i can buy that package or part of that package and have a reasonable assurance that I will not lose money.

3. Financial institutions can generate fees by brokering these deals. This is still necessary for small banks which cannot generate the volume in order to securitize.

The entire mess is really really complicated and involves a lot of competing interests. The largest contributor was probably poor handling of the dot com bust, an entirely screwed up system of incentives on wall street and malfeasance on the part of the rating agencies.

I wrote this for a Republican Partisan not too long ago, and its about half complete so bear with me

The things that i missed an be summed up as such


CDS = Credit Default Swap: A Credit Default Swap is basically insurance on something you don't have to own. These were created in the mid 90's, do have real purpose, but were entirely unregulated. These created systematic risk in the financial sector

Sec leveraging changes = In 2003-4 a number of big investment banks went to the SEC to get exempt from the 12:1 leveraging rules. Leveraging rules basically put a limit on the amount of debt a company can hold. 12:1 means that you can have 12 times the amount of debt as money that you have on hand. The exemption allowed them to leverage up to 40 times. Leveraging is good in that it increases profits(the specifics of which go into why debt is valuable to a society). Leveraging is bad in that it increases the risk you're going to fail because too many people want their money at the same time(see: Bank runs). I'll give you one guess as to who got the exemption. It starts with an "L" and ends with a "ehman Brother's and AIG"

Systematic risk: is what happens when a single asset failing triggers another asset failing.

Manipulation of the markets could occur due to the very low volumes of these assets and was a problem relating to the credit crunch and security revaluation.

The banks are so out of their league that it isn't even funny, the scenario with a seller being fucked and unable to sell because the bank takes 3-6 months to come back on an offer not to mention they often demand a silly asking price that is based on god knows what happens pretty much every single time.

For loans out west, everyone but Wells Fargo is pretty much a fucking retard.  Perhaps some of the small banks aren't too bad but honestly if you have accounts with BofA I would suggest you switch.  The level of incompetence I've seen from them in the last 6 months is pretty staggering.  There may be some small players that you can actually get something done with but we've basically been reduced to a single loan officer we can count on to actually close something in a timely fashion in the bay area.  One guy.  Sad state of affairs.

As for the agent, I've been working the selling side of real estate for just under 2 years, yeah they are all crooks.  The whole system is completely retarded.  Agents do good things for you, but you basically have to trick them and abuse them in order to make them earn that commission.  There is almost no way that a buyer is ever fairly represented in the way they imagine they should be.

I call them like I see them, and I find it very important to point out when people are doing a good job. Learned it from my last boss, you'd think it'd be obvious. I have given very serious thoughts to getting licensed as a real estate agent and eventually as a broker, so I could open a small brokerage backed by either of the two lawyers I worked with (it did help that the seller's (and bank's) attorney chairs the library board as did her father...). A good honest lawyer (she does lots of good pro bono charity) plus a good honest broker, and I know a good contractor for inspections. The only puzzle piece I don't have is a good local lender, my lender is good and local, but the agent I dealt with isn't the best. If she retires or I could find another person in the department, I could have a great business that would really help people (and make $$$).

Definitely tempting, build it for a few years and step away and let it generate dough once I've found a couple decent agents who understand that doing honest deals that benefit both parties is the best way to do long-term business....

Did you try a mortgage broker instead of a bank? Just seems like an easier way to go in my experience.

Not to say I still didn't get fucked around a bit and lose a percentage point on my first house.

Go through a credit union if at all possible.  They won't all be rosy, but your chances are definately better.

This is par for the course.  I have seen this exact same scenario play out several times. Seems like a ton of these Realtors who specialize in foreclosed properties are total slime, they just snuff all other offers while they or the investment group they are a part of submit the lowest offer they know the bank will accept.  They may even be in cahoots with a few people at the bank but my guess is the bank never sees any offer but the one the Realtor submits.

At the very least report them to whatever board handles real estate licensing in your state.

edit:  actually I just remember my high school buddy (who is an attorney) is seeing this exact same scenario happen to his neighbor.  Her husband died a few years ago and she isn't doing so well and has since moved.  She listed her house and the Realtor gave her all kinds of bad advice (like oh don't worry about cleaning out all the garbage, painting or any of that) that was over 6 months ago with no offers on the house and now the foreclosure process has just started.  Once the foreclosure notices start the listing agent immediately tells her about an offer for what she owes on it (about 30% below asking).

A little suspicious the lady asks for a copy of her listing agreement and the Realtor dodges her for weeks, so she asks my buddy to help out.  He asks me to pull it up on MLS and these scumbags didn't even put the house on MLS till a few days ago.  Basically they contracted with her to actively market the property as her listing agent and then did nothing but wait for foreclosure so a "buddy" could buy it as a flip.

edit #2:  not sure about other states but in TX real estate attorneys can represent you and receive commission the same way a Realtor would.  If you are buying a home and know a bit about the industry there usually is no need for any representation just negotiate off the buyers agents 3% and if you are unsure of any documentation make the title company explain it and walk if you don't like it.  If you do find you are having difficulties with the transaction itself then you are probably better off with a Real Estate Attorney instead of a Realtor.  If you are looking for a house and don't know anything about the area and are having trouble finding a home that is when a Realtor is most useful.

This has always been a question of mine:  what exact does a buyers agent *do*?  Our agent has done really nothing except for arrange for us to get in and look at houses, which typically involves nothing more than a phone call and opening the little key-lock-box thing.  Each time we have made offers, he brings out the same boilerplate contract (published by the California Association of Realtors), fills out half a dozen lines, gets us to sign it, then faxes it to the sellers agent.  Every legal question we've had regarding the contract he has been unwilling or unable to answer.

Is that what he's getting paid 3% to do?

I mean, if I downloaded a copy of the contract, could I submit offers myself or in conjunction with my real estate attorney?  I would much prefer my attorney to get the commission if this is possible, or even to negotiate down the offer based on the buyer's agent's commission, if my attorney would be willing to accept less.

In my state, (VA) they get access to the MLS. They are the only pipeline to it and so you're forced to use them if you want access to the listings.

In the Bay Area California, we have always used the public MLS search to find listings:

Public MLS Listing Search (http://www.mlslistings.com)

We have found every property we have been interested in using that search:  amazingly enough, no realtor has ever found a property for us to look at.

Maybe this is CA specific?

You can submit the forms yourself, just be sure and negotiate that 3% because if you say nothing it usually ends up going to the listing agent.  Buyer's agents pretty much access MLS for you, show you property, recommend people (home inspector, survey, title co) and point out the same 5 or so pitfalls on the contract (like make the offer conditional on you obtaining financing).  The other 85% of their day (which your 3% is paying for) generally consists of finding the next client.  Listing agents do a little more work if they actually market the house but they still spend most of their time finding clients. 

It is a sales job like any other commission based sales job 80% of the work is finding the client and 20% is servicing the client.

Your buyers agent does whatever it is you want him to do. He prescreens houses, he gives advise as to whether or not the house is a good deal and can negotiate for you. He helps craft the offers to ensure that you are getting what you want and are protected. He makes sure everything is ready for the closing and typically handles all aspects of the inspection(except paying for it) and ensures that those issues are taken care of. He can give "legal" advice on real estate law(iirc), but that typically comes with caveat. I know that will will answer questions provided i can go get a source and reference a source instead of myself[covering your own ass, 101]

I quoted Bhodi because I am also in VA:

In VA he also gets paid by the seller. Which has some problems regarding seeing some houses[Often Realtors will not want to show FSBOs or properties with low buyer commissions. But it also means that if you don't use an agent, you get no one who is legally obliged to act in your best interests and don't pay any less. The seller will be in contract with his agent, and so any reduction in price or moving the commission would have to be done as a separate contract with the sellers agent. Which is probably not going to happen since, assuming you really do want the house, he holds all the cards and you're asking to cut his paycheck in half for that deal.

But in the end, Salamok is correct, most of it is marketing, even if there is real value in the services provided.

I brought the listing for the house I bought to my buyer agent. He was pretty much useless, even though I specifically asked to see that one property, he started printing out dozens of other (more expensive) properties. We have an online MLS, I knew more about stuff in the price range than he did, I'd been following the market for longer, informally. Once he found out I had retained a lawyer, he basically gave up. I would not use a buyer agent again, but I would never buy a property without a lawyer involved on my behalf.

If you don't have the time to look for yourself, a good buyer agent can help narrow your search. I wouldn't know, I've never met a good buyer agent. It was worth my time to look on my own, gauge the market and trends, and have a solid knowledge of the entire market when I go to buy. I know exactly what my house is worth, what sort of value I can pump into it and still cash out, where properties move, etc. I got an amazing deal that had flown under my buyer agent's radar (because they converted the 2nd BR into an office, so it listed as 1 BR).

My real-estate advice is simple.

1. Get a good lawyer.
2. Research the shit out of your market.
3. Negotiate HARD with your bank. (assuming good credit here...)

Agents, pheh. I think I've pretty much made my feelings on agents known. If you're selling, good to get it on the MLS through one. I will probably FSBO if I have to sell, because it's such a hot neighborhood I won't need to advertise it.

PS: Get a good lawyer.

You know there didn't even used to be such a thing as a buyers agent.  It used to be a "selling" agent and a "listing" agent, neither of these were legally obligated to look out for the buyers best interest.  Then someone had the bright idea of "gee shouldn't one of these guys be looking out for the buy" so selling agent was replaced by buying agent and became legally bound to look out for the buyers interest.  Great theory but in practice nothing really changed as most "buyers agents" (or sellers agents) won't do anything to jeopardize the deal, because the deal is the paycheck.

My agent was wonderful.  She was great when I was buying and, unfortunately, when I was selling.  Basically she approached any transaction as if she was in my place and told me what she thought of this, that, or the other based on it.  When selling she took only a 2% cut since I had used her before.

She let me pick out most of the houses we went to look at (HAR has all the local MLS listings) since I was following it daily, but pulled up any of the secret agent info to show me.  If she hasn't retired, I'll use her when I get serious about looking again.  For someone like me who isn't interested in watching my backside and just wanted a home I could be happy in, she was awesome.

Our agent was okay I guess. Although I found the house we bought through looking at the MLS myself.

Where he fell short...
Things I assumed would be done werent and he should have warned my wife and I about this.

A) Clean your old hangers and shit out of closets. Why the fuck would I want all these old hangers filling up closets?

B) Take your trash to the fucking dumpster before vacating. Trash includes old pots filled with dirt and long dead plants around the yard.
C) Take down all art work way prior to vacating so you have time to spackle all the damn holes you made in the drywall/plaster.
D) Make sure that having the house professionaly cleaned is in the contract with penalties if it isnt done.
E) If you dont leave me a forwarding address or notify important people of your change of address dont get all bitchy with me and send me a nasty letter 3 months later from Wisconsin when people cant get hold of you. I will throw your mail in the garbage if I have no way to send it to you.

USPS Mail Forwarding Service - Use It.

I think it's free, actually.

When I bought my house and the last house, I had the exact same situation.  There is still a ton of crap in the garage I never felt like throwing away from the previous owner.

The main purpose of a Buyer's agent is to search the MLS for you, and to open the lockbox when you look at a place :).

Most agents with decent websites will have an IDX search feature. They may require you to register first (which guarantees you six years of junk mail and follow up calls, if its a successful agent), but it will give you full search access to the MLS.

What they don't tell you, is that every listing on the MLS has two versions - the public version, and the Realtor's version with all of the additional details they don't want you to know.

The absolute best way to search for a house is to find a Realtor who is a good enough of a friend to let you have access to their MLS login. Most won't though, as the MLSs are extremely nasty about this.

In Richmond they charge $5,000 the first time someone other than you gets your password. Its unlikely you're going to get anyone to do that for you

The buyer's agent is definitely more for the time strapped where I live. If you are going to do all the research yourself then you might as well take the real estate exam (any moron can pass it) and take the buyer's agent commission for yourself.

In November 2001 when we needed to move out of NYC by the end of January, there were just too many houses to choose from so our agent (a family friend) took my wife to 10 houses one weekday, got a feel for what she did and didn't like and then took her to ten more another day. That was a huge help. There were too many different styles in Westchester county to just search MLS. If you are just buying a condo and have a specific town in mind, then an agent like that wouldn't add any value.

Like most major life decisions, buying a house gets easier the more you do it. Even though millions of people have done it before you, there is no way to transfer all that experience. You have to go through it and learn to avoid all the leaches waiting to suck $100 to $2,000 from you along the way.

Yes the national association of realtors know that the only real value realtors offer to their customers is access to MLS database as such they have lobbied extensively to prevent it's unrestricted use by the public.  There are online only real estate brokers that are mostly automated that will serve as your buyers agent for a reduced fee (usually 1% instead of 3%).

The biggest cockblock with the IDX/publicly accessable version of the MLS is that it strips out all of the contact information and leaves you with just the phone # of whatever agent you are going through to access MLS data (if you are lucky you will also get the sellers agents info).

When I was searching, I was using several sources, including three sites that plugged into MLS databases. All publicly available. All had only part of the picture, but definitely enough to make most decisions on. Learn what resources are available for your market and you can do well. Of course, being in a podunk market works both ways: we have less overall resources, but they're more available because there's less incentive to hide them.

I just bought a house this year myself and had a wonderful experience with my buyers agent. She helped us  research homes (and we did an f'ton of our own research, but she still found more properties that we wanted to see), she helped us on multiple offers (that part sucked balls, but it wasn't her fault), she worked actively with my loan guy to make sure our offer process was smooth, and when the seller's escrow company started getting stupid she took care of it. She earned every penny she received from her work in the sale.

...and she's getting a nice Christmas gift. I've also sent her two other clients who have bought houses in the area. She deserves the business... but is probably an exception. :)

Short sales... don't bother to be honest. We wanted to bid on a few but the extra time it puts on getting a home is horrible. It's not a solid thing either, the bank that holds the loan does not even have to agree to the idea before the house is listed. So you are looking at someone who is desperately hoping to find a way out of a bad situation. While it would have been nice to have helped someone in that boat... they aren't on firm ground and you have to put a lot of energy into hoping that when they go to the bank and say "This is better than just closing us down!" that it works.

It's stupid for the banks not to do it, as the foreclosed homes end up going for less... but that's the rub. I bought a foreclosed home, as have both of my referrals to my agent. Who rocks. Did I mention that?

We had a pretty good experience with our buyer's agent as well. He showed us plenty of properties, and we put down on offer on one house in our price range. The owner came back demanding that we pay all the closing costs - every single bit. He tried multiple times to talk her out of that bit of retardery and when he couldn't, he recommended we just walk away from it, which we did. Fuck that noise. All along the way he explained stuff to us, was extremely patient when my wife continually pestered him about all sorts of stuff (our mortgage broker was a bit annoying, in that he kept giving us a nondefinitive answer as to whether we got the loan or not). I'd most certainly use the buyer's agent again.

This.

Also if you are going to pay an agent and you are buying...

Be mean.  Be cruel. Work with one from every major broker and a few desperate indy types.  Send them all out looking on Sundays and demand whatever you want.  The one who needs the $$$ will get you what you ask for.  The others can fuck off.