The perpetrator in this story tried to pull a fast one…..by being incredibly slow.

Not all Realtors are created equal, and there are some bad apples in the bunch.

Much to my colleagues’ chagrin, I’m going to share with you a story of how a dirty agent operates…

I’ll give you the ending before I tell the actual story: everything worked out alright, and my client got the property.

But two days later, I’m still thinking about what could have happened had my client and I been screwed over like the listing agent intended.

I had been working with Janie for the better part of four months trying to find her a large 1-bedroom condo in the St. Lawrence Market area, but we saw condo after condo and there was nothing that struck her fancy.

If I have one fault, it’s that I’m too picky for my clients.  A colleague of mine always says, “Don’t get in the boat with them,” meaning that you’re not living in the condo so keep your opinions to yourself.  But knowing what Janie was looking for, and understanding who she was and where she was in life, I just didn’t see anything that I thought was a good “fit.”

On Friday of last week, at about 3:30PM, a new listing hit the market that looked fantastic on paper.  I emailed it to Janie, and she called me to set up an appointment for Saturday morning.

I met Janie and her boyfriend, Devon, on Saturday at about 1PM, and it took about three minutes of exploring this over-sized, 765 square foot condo on Adelaide for Janie to say, “Yep, this is it.  Let’s make an offer.”

I found it ironic that Janie and I had seen thirty condos and nothing had worked, yet the first time Devon tagged along, we ended up buying the place!  I thanked Devon for making my job easier, and told him that he had to come with me on all my showings from now on!

We signed the offer at 1PM on Saturday afternoon, and I called the listing agent to let her know that I had faxed it to her office.

This is where things started to go wrong.

The listing agent asked me when time my offer would be irrevocable until, and I told her until 11:59PM Saturday evening.

She told me, “Oh dear, that’s not good.  That’s not going to work at all, I don’t have time to present this offer to my client until tomorrow.”

Oh I should mention – the client was her daughter.

In a 24/7 business where there are no standard work hours, I found it odd that she found thirteen hours on a Saturday to be “insufficient time” to work with an offer.

I have presented offers before with two-hour irrevocables; it says, “If you want to make a deal, let’s do it.”

But she was telling me that she didn’t want to work with the offer that day at all!

I told her what I always tell agents, “Well Gloria, it seems to me that if your client – your daughter, wants to sell her biggest asset and largest investment, perhaps it would be worth her while to make herself available to look over an offer that is close to full price.”

She then fed me excuse after excuse: “I’m going to the theatre tonight out of town and my daughter wants her fiancee to be involved in the presentation process; he’s not available until tomorrow, but she won’t be available tomorrow during the day either, so it will have to be tomorrow night…”

Excuse after excuse, after excuse.

Worried that she might not present the offer to her client, I showed up at 2:30PM during the open house she was running at the condo to hand-deliver a copy of the offer.

I attempted to give her the offer, and she put out both hands in an “X” pushing me away like I was trying to give her the plague.

“Don’t give that to me; don’t show that to me – I’m not taking it unless it’s in a sealed envelope.”

And that was when I figured out what she was doing.

She was 100% set on selling the property herself, probably through the open house.  She was running that open house to solicit an offer, plain and simple.

I put the offer down on the dining room table and said, “Here it is, please let me know when you present it to your clients.”  I watched her pick it up like it was a dead, diseased rat, and place it in her briefcase.

At 9PM, she called me and said, “As I told you today, I can’t present the offer this evening.  Sorry!”

She was stalling.

She told me she wouldn’t be able to present until 7PM on Sunday evening, which was ironically three hours after her second public open house.

On Sunday morning, I sent her an offer with an irrevocable of 7PM.  I faxed a copy to her office and home, and emailed a PDF version to her Blackberry.

I haven’t felt this anxious about a deal in a long time.

I worried incessantly all Sunday long, and I had trouble sleeping the night before.

I called the listing agent at 5PM on Sunday, and she was still at the open house!  Open houses run 2-4PM, but she was determined to sell the property herself!

She didn’t present the offer until 7PM on Sunday, presumably because she spent 5-7PM calling every single person who came through the open house trying to solicit an offer.

And at 7PM on Sunday, we reached a deal.  Janie got the condo that we had visualized in our minds for almost four months, and I breathed a sigh of relief since I knew that this agent spent 36 hours trying to screw us, and in the end, we beat her and took home the prize.

But what makes me uncomfortable is the “what if” factor here.

Because really, what could I have done?

What recourse would I have had if things didn’t go our way?

I could jump up and down like a child, call her a “stupid-head” and kick imaginary pebbles on the sidewalk with my bare-feet, but even if I did take her to the RECO Ethics Committee, nothing would have changed.

Janie and I would still be looking for a condo, and the listing agent (assuming she keeps her license) would go on playing dirty wherever and whenever she feels like it.

At one point during our conversations on Sunday, I accused the listing agent of “trying to sell the property herself,” and she fought back, “Well….wouldn’t you do the same thing?”

It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but the truth is, I would NEVER have even thought of employing her shrewd, self-interested tactics.

I truly believe that you’re only as good as your reputation in this business, and I would estimate that almost half of my clients are referrals from past clients or good friends.

Eventually, shady dealings catch up with you, and you can only play dirty for so long before you get caught.

This particular story had a happy ending.

But what about next time?

Or the time after that?