We need your help!! Insider Selling?!?!

General Real Estate Investing
1

Let me start off by saying that I am sorry if this has already been posted, but i couldn’t find it on the site.

The situation:
North Carolina…1.61 arces on a mountain…price $30,450
We pull the MLS and have a friend call the owner first and inquire about the property price and to place an offer. The owner says to call back in 3 hours when he gets the information in front of him. From there we wait to call. We have our friend call back and he says that he is not willing to negotiate a price and is not accepting any offers. We ask if we should go through the R.E. Agent and the owner say no no…wait about 10 seconds later he says that he will not accept anything less that $32,000. In the matter of 10 seconds the price went up.
The next step we take is calling OUR R.E. Agent and having her pull the MLS and see what the price of the property is and we tell her to place an offer of the full amount. This was on a Saturday. Monday we hear back that there is another bidder and WE out bid to the asking price that our friend was told of $32K. What gets us is that in the 3 months that the property was for sale at $30,450 there was NOT A SINGLE OFFER PLACED and as soon as we inquire about it…the price goes up $1600 and is now sold to another buyer who incidentally stumbled upon this lot AT THE SAME TIME WE DID.

Now here is the questions (sorry that took so long). If we offer the full amount AND ARE FIRST at doing this, is the seller obligated to sell the property? and secondly, Can the seller say ‘hey buddy of mine, someone just placed and offer to buy the property… you need to outbid them so I can sell to you’? and how long does it take to see how much the property sold for? and should we find a R.E. Attorney?

Thank you for your help with this situation

2

I assume that the property was listed with a RE broker (since you mentioned it was in the MLS). I suggest you have your agent contact the seller’s broker to find out if there’s a fully-signed agreement of sale on the property. If the seller isn’t represented by a broker, ask the seller if there’s a fully-signed contract. However, it sounds as if this seller likes to play games and may not be honest. Do you really want to do business with somebody you can’t trust?

It doesn’t make any difference who submits a purchase offer first, last or in between. Until and unless the seller signs one of them, they are only offers and not binding on anybody. The seller is not required to sign any of the offers. (If the seller has a listing broker, however, the seller might be liable for commission if the broker produced a ready, willing & able buyer who offered price and terms acceptable to the seller.)

Nancy