Be honest: are you mad at me?

Just a little?

Not only did I ignore that, last week, most of you didn’t like having to wait for “part two” of a blog story, but I also promised in Wednesday’s blog that I wouldn’t do it again…

…and then I did.

But a “cliffhanger” is only one way of selling a story; a “gotcha” is another!

And when you put a cliffhanger and a gotcha together, well, you get what we have here today…

This story has a lot of themes.

There’s a man of principle, there’s a lady of ill repute, and between them, there was destined to be a moral tug-of-war.

How far would you go to protect your principles?

And at what point would doing so equate to “cutting off your nose to spite your face?”

This was the summer of 2010 and Rob and Michelle were moving to Toronto imminently, and their children were starting private school in September.  Rob and Michelle surely didn’t want to be homeless, but Rob had a major problem in front of him: he was stuck in a representation agreement with an agent whom he absolutely refused to be involved with.

Rob had told me, “I won’t buy a house if it means that agent gets a penny from the sale,” and he said he wouldn’t budge on his position.

Rob’s “contract” with the agent, Abigail, had four months left on it.

Do the math, and that means he wouldn’t be buying a house until November, and thus he likely wouldn’t be moving until January or February of the next year!

When we left off in Wednesday’s story, recall that Rob and Michelle were mid-negotiation on a house when we got the news from Abigail that she would hold the Buyer Representation Agreement over all of our heads.

Suffice it to say, we walked away from that negotiation and never looked back.  We had bigger issues at hand, and we needed to figure out what, if anything, we could do about this contract that Rob and Michelle were duped into signing.

I asked my manager if he could speak to Abigail’s manager, which is like asking your mom to speak to the mom of the boy you’re fighting with at school.  But it’s the logical next step and it’s the most professional way to handle this.

My manager called the other manager, and they chatted.  They were civil and understanding of one another, but ultimately the other manager said, “I couldn’t do anything even if I wanted to.”

That’s a classic line.  It means “I don’t want to, so I’m not going to try.”

But maybe look at this from his position: another manager at a competing office says that your agent bribed a home inspector and duped a buyer into signing a contract, thus the buyer wants out of the contract so this competing office can sell the buyer real estate.

Sure.  Maybe.

Or maybe not.

What the heck does he know?

Abigail would have denied all of this, and I’m sure he has to back his own agent.

This path took us nowhere and Abigail’s manager refused to let Rob and Michelle out of the Buyer Representation Agreement, as questionable as that agreement was.

I told Rob and Michelle and they were pissed.  Rightfully so.

Rob said, “You know, I still don’t even have a copy of this agreement that I supposedly signed,” which in itself is grounds to make the contract unenforceable.  But Abigail or her manager could always claim that a copy was provided, and Rob simply lost it.

What a dirty game, eh?

Rob said to me, “David, I want to buy a house.  I do.  But I won’t do it if Abigail is anywhere near this thing.”

He asked me to “escalate” this somehow, so I sought about how to do that.

Abigail worked for a brokerage that was a franchise and part of a much larger, well-known organization.

Atop that organization is a President or CEO, or some similarly-titled individual who would have sway over any brokerage, agent, or situation having to do with the parent company.

My office manager emailed this individual, who we’ll call “Mr. President,” and said that they needed to speak.

Mr. President took some time to email back but eventually did, and said, “Let’s try to flush this out over email.  Please state your case.”

So we did exactly that.

And maybe that made more sense?  Perhaps rather than calling and ranting, venting, and accusing on the phone, it made more sense to present a well-thought-out “case” to Mr. President.

Rob was on board.  This simply made him hate real estate agents even more, but he was willing to play.

Both Rob and Michelle drafted letters stating that they never knowingly signed a Buyer Representation Agreement and that they never received a copy.

Rob and Michelle also presented a timeline of events, from the first meeting with Abigail, through the conditional purchase and subsequent home inspection, and presented their “findings” of both the house and what the home inspector said.

The home inspector refused to speak to us, or Rob and Michelle, but it would have been extremely unlikely that he’d have come clean.

We included our Buyer Representation Agreement, signed by Rob and Michelle, and last but not least, we included a note from Rob to both Abigail and Mr. President.

Rob effectively said:

While I never knowingly signed a Buyer Representation Agremeent, nor did I receive a copy, I understand that you and your brokerage are refusing to acknowledge that.

Agent Abigail is a cheat and a crook and I will never do business with her under any circumstances.

I understand that you and your brokerage are choosing, potentially, to enforce a B.R.A. that has a little under four months left on it.

If that is the case, then I will wait four months to purchase a home for my family.

On that, you have my word.

Wow.

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!

We sent all of this over to Mr. President and CC’d our Broker of Record, Tom Bosley, as well as our in-house legal counsel, the other brokerage’s office manager, and of course, Abigail.

Rob said, “This had better work.”

And we waited.

One week later, Mr. President called my office manager and made us an offer:

“We’ll cancel the B.R.A. that Rob and Michelle are under, provided a 25% referral fee is paid to our brokerage.”

Fancy that.

I didn’t know whether this was a win or not.

Choose to believe me, or not, but I didn’t care what I was compensated.  I wanted to do right Rob and Michelle and get them into a house in time for fall, and I wanted to do right by Jim, my blog reader who had introduced me to to Rob in the first place.

I have a very large business and a loyal clientele.  I don’t care what I’m compensated on one individual transaction because it all comes out in the wash.  My business is built on repeat and referrals and taking care of Rob and Michelle, however possible, was my only goal.

I called Rob and told him about Mr. President’s offer, and there was silence on the other end of the phone.

Silence, good?

Or silence, bad?

I had absolutely no idea how he was going to respond to this, and the longer he waited, the more time I had to flip-flop on my predicted outcome.

He finally spoke, albeit slowly, and said, “Well……….David……….that’s………”

And based on his tone, I figured we were going to a happy place.

But he continued, “………absolutely…………..fucking unacceptable!”

Then he went on a tirade.

Who could blame him?

This was like being run over, and once you had a chance to get to your knees, the truck backs up and runs you over again.

“This can’t happen, Rob said.  It just fucking can’t happen.”

I apologized to Rob and told him that we did everything in our power, and that I was willing to sell him a house and take our chances that Abigail sues and wins.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” I told Rob.  “I just want to get you guys taken care of.”

Rob said, “I know, David, and I appreciate that.  You’re a good guy.  But it matters to me, David.  It matters to me.”

“I have principles,” Rob said.

A couple of days later, a house came onto the market that Rob and Michelle really liked, and even though they were still in Surrey, they liked it enough to reconsider the position that they were in.

Rob called me and said, “Michelle says I’m being an ass and that I’m putting my principles and morals ahead of my family, and I dunno, I just dunno what to think.”

Neither did I.

“David, I’ll tell you what,” Rob said.  “You go get that offer in writing – that we pay a 25% referral of blood money to that witch so she can spend it on a new broomstick, and we’ll just fucking move forward, okay?  We’ll just fucking do it.”

I didn’t consider this to be a case of Rob “caving,” but rather I think he realized that he had stuck to his guns, adhered to his morals, and now it was time to put his family in a position to thrive moving forward.

I called my office manager and told him we had the greenlight, and he called Mr. President from the other brokerage.

The next day, we received a referral agreement from the other brokerage, only it wasn’t……………exactly as we had agreed.

In actual fact, it wasn’t anywhere close.

The original Buyer’s Representation Agreement had been signed in May of 2010 and ran until November of 2010, and we had agreed to a 25% referral.

But the referral agreement we received was for a 35% referral fee and it extended the duration of the contract to November of 2011.

It was insane.

So insane, in fact, that my manager called Mr. President to confirm that this wasn’t a typo, and that “2011” wasn’t supposed to say “2010,” but Mr. President confirmed that these were teh terms.

My manager said, “We had an agreement at 25% and there was zero mention of extending the contract by a goddam year!”

Mr. President said, “Well, that’s the only way Abigail would move forward with this, and while I don’t necessarily agree with her position, I’m going to back an agent who’s been with our firm for twenty-five years.”

This stunk to high heaven, and I knew Rob wouldn’t agree.

You can only push somebody so far before they push back – viciously.

I called Rob and told him, and he very calmly, quietly, and deliberately said, “David, we’ll be in Toronto next weekend to look at rentals, thank you.”

And that was that.

Rob really, truly, and actually was planning to rent a house for the first year that they would be in Toronto, rather than buy a house and have Agent Abigail and her merry band of thieves partake.

For me, it was a little bit of “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I figured that Rob would blow off some steam and eventually realize that this was a mistake.

It wasn’t petty.  It wasn’t short-sighted.  It wasn’t vindictive or anything.

It was just…….well, it was unique.

His position was unique because his principles were so unique.

Who else would do this?

It wasn’t costing him anything, after all.  A referral would be paid from my brokerage to Abigail’s brokerage, and he would never have to speak to her or even hear her name again.  He just had to buy a house for his family and know that a person he absolutely loathed would get some form of compensation.

But that was an absolute non-starter.

I met Rob and Michelle the following weekend and showed them houses in the area, priced anywhere from $6,000 – $10,000 per month, and the words “sale” or “purchase” never came up.

Rob never mentioned Abigail, he never mentioned Mr. President, and he never alluded to any previous dealings.

He was just super focused on the houses we were seeing, the leasing process, tenants’ rights, and everything in between.

We found an awesome house that was about four streets away from the house where we had previously made an offer to purchase, and we submitted an offer to lease for $7,500 per month.

Throughout the process, a small part of me still expected Rob to abruptly say, “Alright, nevermind.  Let’s just go buy that house.”

But he didn’t.

And when the lease was signed, sealed, and delivered, it became very apparent that Rob’s principles were truly above all else.

Rob and Michelle rented an R.V. and drove across the country with their kids, arriving in Toronto about one week before school started.  Seeing Rob and his family climb out of the R.V. onto a street within one of Toronto’s most prestigious neighbourhoods, that’s home to many of Toronto’s elite, gave me more perspective on who Rob was.

He just didn’t give a shit.

Rob was his own man.  Rob did things his way.  He was as successful as he was intelligent, but he had his own view of the world and the way things should work, and he wouldn’t compromise on his beliefs no matter what.

Rob, Michelle, and the kids settled into the house and our communication died down.

About four or five months later, I was interviewing for an administrative assistant position, and I was forwarded the name of a young lady by a mutual friend.

I set up an interview for an evening after work the next week, and I met her at our old office on Merton Street.

She was bright and chipper, and seemed to really relish the opportunity to speak to me.

Of course, when I asked her, “Where are you currently working?” and she provided an answer, that’s when I realized why she couldn’t stop smiling.

“Oh, you don’t know?” she asked me in response.

“I work for Agent Abigail,” she said.

I just about fell over in my chair.

“And your name is a staple in our office on a daily basis, let me tell you,” she added.

The young lady went on to explain that part of her daily routine was to monitor all sales from the neighbourhood in which Rob and Michelle were looking to purchase, add the sales to a database, and then check Land Registry for past sales to see the names of the new owners.

“Abigail wants to make sure that if Rob and Michelle bought a house, we know about it, and she’s getting paid,” the young lady told me.

Imagine that?

Even though Abigail was a shady and corrupt agent who acted unethically, not to mention illegally, and whom Rob and Michelle wanted no part of, Abigail still felt she was owed a commission if she could prove Rob and Michelle purchased a property while they were under contract to Abigal’s brokerage.

“Did they buy a house?” the young lady asked me.

And before you surmise that she was taking this interview on behalf of Abigail, and asking this question as a spy, she wasn’t.  She was asking as a young woman who enjoyed the gossip and drama, just as much as she enjoyed watching TMZ for the same reason.

She liked to gossip, that’s for sure.  She told me that Abigail had not one, not two, but three assistants, all of them without anything to fill the hours, and that this was likely to satisfy Abigail’s ego.  After all, an agent with three assistants is clearly a “big deal.”

I did not end up hiring this young woman, but that’s an aside.

In the late-spring of the following year, Rob reached out and said, “We need to start looking at houses again.”

He said that he loved the house they were renting and the kids were very happy there, but the house just didn’t feel like “theirs.”

Because it wasn’t.

Even though Rob still had several months left on his lease, he wanted to buy a house that they could take pride in, call “home” for real, and put their own personal touches on.

I ended up selling Rob and Michelle a house off-market, which was a sign of the times back then, because this house had been listed four or five times before.  If this house was listed today, it would sell in a heartbeat.

By the time they closed on the house a few months later, I believe they ended up walking away from three months‘ worth of rent, which was $22,500 real dollars, but Rob didn’t care.  He had absolutely no regrets on how this worked out, and said that he “wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

The house they purchased was far superior to the home on which we had offered the prior year.  Not to mention, living in the rental for several months helped them learn about the area, the housing styles, and the different vibes on different streets, and told them exactly where they wanted to live when they bought.

When the sale closed, I showed up at the new house and Rob looked at me with a completely straight face and said, “Did you send Abigail a bottle of Veuve?”

I smiled and then laughed.  But Rob did not.

“I’m serious,” he said, as he looked at me without blinking.

I started to think about whether or not this was the right thing to do, but all of a sudden, Rob burst out laughing and said, “I’m just messing with you!”

Thirteen years later, Rob and Michelle reached out and said that they were potentially looking to downsize.  The time had absolutely flown by.  Their children were now in university and out of the house permanently, unlikely to even come back and live there in the summers.

I spent some time with Rob and Michelle last month and, honestly, I find it so hard to actually do my job because we spend all our time laughing.

These guys are hilarious.  They’re an absolute riot.  We can’t get anything done on our showings because we spend all our time joking around.

They’re both just such incredible people and I both enjoy and value our time together.

I told them the last time we met that when I was working with them in 2010 and 2011, I looked up to them as parents, and knowing that I would one day be raising children, I loved watching their interactions with the kids.

I remember how tough, stern, blunt, and borderline rude Rob was the first time we spoke, emailed, and then met.  And I remember how blog reader, Jim, had described Rob as “difficult.”

Rob isn’t difficult at all.  He’s one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met.  He absolutely worships his wife.  He does everything in his life for his children.

But when it comes to business, Rob is a completely different person.

And when it comes to his principles, Rob is as dug-in as the roots of a century-old tree.

Agent Abigail is still in the business.  I think she’s in her 68th year or something.  Seriously, she must be a thousand years old.

In the grand scheme of things, the nine months in the rental house, the $22,500 that was “wasted” on a house they didn’t live in, and the frustration experienced along the way is simply a blip on the radar of Rob and Michelle’s lives.  Rob stuck to his principles back in 2010 and never wavered, but was never going to waver.  That’s who he is and that’s why he’s got to where he is in life.

I don’t know that another person would have done what Rob did, and while it’s easy for any of us to say, “I’d have done the same,” we’ll honestly never know.

“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
~Thomas Jefferson

“Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.”
~Abraham Lincoln

“Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.”
~Victor Hugo