You are not obligated to this agent except for the one house you put the offer in on. Yes I would call the listing brokers on the other houses you're interested in, although I don't know if you have to wait until you get an answer on this one.

Linda is right.....

"t is unethical to put offers on multiple properties if you only intend on buying one of them.",......besides ethical aspect, doing so may get you in financial trouble what if all the offers you made were accepted, but you could only afford less number of properties than the number of offers you made.

cpartist....please tell me that you are not a Realtor and offering this kind of advice?

You are not obligated to this agent except for the one house you put the offer in on. Yes I would call the listing brokers on the other houses you're interested in, although I don't know if you have to wait until you get an answer on this one.

No I am not an agent. Linda is correct IF they signed a buyer's agreement. I had forgotten about buyer's agent agreements.

If they put the offer in, they cannot put any other offers on other houses until they get an answer on the one they put in but after they find out about this one house (or they rescind the offer), if they do not have a buyer's agent agreement with the agent in question, then they are in no way obligated to use her again, so in that case, I would just call the listing agent for each house. As a buyer you are not obligated to stick with one agent.

In the past, I would tell agents not to send me listings or contact me about other houses.

I moved within the state last year but to a new city and it was very important to me to have a great agent who I could trust to help me find the right home. The one I worked with was absolutely fantastic about keeping me up to date about new listings, returning phone calls, and most importantly guiding me to the best areas for my needs. If it were me I would have a heart to heart with this agent about my expectations to see if I could feel better about working with them. I would also ask about the seasonality of the market in the area you are moving to. There might be a lot more houses coming on the market in the next couple of months that would suit your needs rather than counting on the short sale house.

Short sales can take a while, maybe things have changed in the last three years but the short sale I bought in 2012 took more than seven months to close. I had an offer on another short sale when it came on the market and since the bank had not agreed all we had to do was withdraw the offer and I got my deposit back. Luckily I was in a rental at the time so I could wait it out. If I had a drop-dead date to move I don't know that I would risk buying another short sale.

If they put the offer in, they cannot put any other offers on other houses until they get an answer on the one they put in but after they find out about this one house (or they rescind the offer

cpartist...another assumption on your part that is not always correct. The ONLY way you can really know is if you have the contract in front of you, read it, AND understand it. Even then there are probably still options available on the purchase of another home.

Short sales can take months before you receive an answer from the owner/investor and many times they come back with their own sales contract (which they do not sign) and here goes another wait. Sales contracts can be structured to allow a Buyer to keep looking at homes and even make an offer on another home and it is not very difficult to accomplish.

An offer on another home CAN probably be written and negotiated with the contingency that the Buyers are able to cancel the offer on the short sale with no penalty to the Buyers. Now my disclaimer....I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice.

Thanks for all the quick replies. We haven't signed any buyer/broker agreement. It makes sense, and we do understand that we are committed to this broker on this one house/offer. It also makes sense that we shouldn't make any other offers until this deal is finished one way or another. There are at least 2 competing offers on this short sale, and the house is delisted. We think there is only one bank and the owner involved, so hopefully we will hear something sooner rather than later. We have a couple of months to kill anyway. So it's nice to know we can move on from this broker if and when the time comes. Thanks again, Ed

If the agent was silly enough to take on a client w/o a written buyer agency agreement, then, yes, you are not obligated to her after this current deal. In fact, she is actually working as a sub agent for the seller if she has no representation contract with you. (at least in NC... How's that Salti?) But, that is another topic entirely.

And, as Summersatthelake points out, you can make multiple offers on separate properties at the same time. Just be sure the offer is written in a way to protect your interests... it is not a difficult task to do. I think I have done this three times since I started in the business.

"If the agent was silly enough to take on a client w/o a written buyer agency agreement,"

This is but another example of taking your parochial experience and stating it is a wide spread practice.

While serving in the Navy for 24 years, I lived in many different areas. After the first two years, we always owned our home. Since I retired from the Navy, I have lived in two different states.

In all of those years, in all of those home purchases and sales (Two w/o a realtor), I was never asked, not one single time, to sign a "buyer agency agreement." Not once.

I agree about regional comments, I've bought many properties and I've never once been asked to sign a buyer agency agreement. I've also never once been asked for a approval or qualification letter to view a house.

These may be common practice in some areas, but I've never experienced it in Southern California.

Same here, Saltidog. I would never and have never signed a Buyer agency agreement. I buy direct through listing agent, or at auctions, or FSBO. Why obligate myself contractually for a long period of time to someone I don't know? If that person is good, he/she will bring me a great house and I will buy it anyway, so commission earned. If he doesn't want to, someone else will. The listing agent always will.

Reminds me of the time I had a house with an indoor pool listed, which not everyone wants, so this was the only house I ever had that didn't sell right away. When the listing expired, I already had an accepted offer at my price, but apparently the Realtors who trolled expired listings in those pre-internet days were unaware of this. One sent me some nonsense via fax about how if the house had been listed with HIM, I would not have FAILED so miserably in selling (yes, caps and bolded) and would not be in anguish now with my languishing property. Yes, truly, language like that. He used the word "I" about 25 times in a short paragraph. It made us laugh out loud. Where was he with all these "qualified buyers who would buy my house" the day before it expired? Or the week or the month before it expired.

Pants on fire.

When the listing expired, I already had an accepted offer at my price,

midcentury.....so you must have had an exclusion in your Listing Agreement so that you could sell it yourself and owe no commission? This is sometimes done in my area also but not very common.

No, summers. I paid the agreed commission at closing. The listing itself expired, but the offer in progress did not, of course. The offer came in just before expiration, and at my price. Score.

Yes, I did have an exclusion to sell it myself, but that is not what ended up happening in that case. Actually the buyers on that one were very interesting. They lived in a tiny house for 20 years and saved cash to buy what they wanted. They bought my house. Easy transaction there. They didn't even play games. She just told me straight on that she had to have that house. Done.

OK, so, we have a friend here in NY who is a RE Agent, and we asked her how long it should take to get an answer on our short sale offer we made two weeks ago in GA. She said that if there is only the seller and one bank involved, two weeks is plenty of time to get an answer. Seems logical to me, but then what's all the hype about how long it takes to move things along on short sales? Even our own broker in GA told us we might have to wait 4-6 weeks to get an answer. That seemed right to us, seeing that you always hear about how long things take with short sales, but then when we asked our broker friend up here, and she said 2 weeks, that makes sense also. Thoughts??

edit: I also noticed that the home is still listed on lots of generic real estate web sites. Does that mean they are still accepting offers, and possibly stalling for time?

" Does that mean they are still accepting offers, and possibly stalling for time?" Can you think of any reason why a bank/lender would not take that into consideration to some extent when evaluating an offer?

Pick up the phone and call another RE in GA and ask what the typical wait is. I'd put more stock in that answer then one from a RE in NY.

YMMV

What you don't see is the Sellers behind the scene activity...the lender/investor might have the Seller submit ALL financials again to see if they qualify. According to who the lender/investor is there might be 3-4 different people the file will get passed along to in the chain and each one may have 50 more files on their desk and really not give a sh*t if it gets done that day or the next week. If the person reviewing the file finds one item incomplete or a document missing they may reject it until information is provided. Sometimes the chain moves so slow that by the time the file gets to the top of the food chain person it has taken too long and all financial documents have to be sent in AGAIN by the Seller and the process starts all over.

One of the really stupid things is that some of the major banks STILL will only accept the documents via fax. If it is an in house/local bank then the process can be much easier.

I have listed and sold several short sales and they have taken anywhere from 6 weeks to 9 months to close. Patience is a key....

I will still list short sale properties and I just don't let the slowness get to me and I am trying to give an idea of what sometimes happens.

Thanks again for the comments. At least if we have time to wait until we need a house, we might as well be waiting with an offer in on a nice house :-)

There is no standard amount of time to get a response. The best way to find out anything at all is to ask the listing agent if the sellers have already been qualified to even do a short sale. If the sellers have already submitted their package prior to listing, then this will decrease the time. But even knowing this bit of info., there are so many behind the scenes variables, that one would only be guessing if they are giving you a time frame. I advise my short sale buyers that it takes a certain type of person to be able to handle the stress of a short sale, and if they are on a schedule of any kind, if they are the type that does not like uncertainty, then move on.

In your case, it may be best to continue shopping and if you find another property that you want to make an offer on, then just do it. Even if you go under contract on the short sale, you will be given a due diligence period in which you can terminate the contract and receive all monies back. Usually 5 - 15 days.