Hauer Real Estate Group

We are all incredibly sorry for the way this whole transaction transpired and it was clearly the worst situation I have seen in my 13 years in selling homes full-time. I feel AWFUL for the sellers, regardless of how they have treated us throughout this transaction. I advised the seller to seek legal counsel since the issues went beyond my scope as a licensed Real Estate agent. I also helped get them connected with a reputable attorney that specializes in Real Estate law and told the attorney to charge me directly for the first $500 worth of his time with them. Keep in mind that I didn't make a penny off of this transaction and spent a lot of money in staging, professional photography, marketing on numerous equestrian sites, along with our already above and beyond marketing compared to your average agent. Much of the claims are completely inaccurate and paint the picture that we were "in the know" about the unethical and dishonest practices that were taking place on the buyer's side of the transaction. If we would have had any insight or reason to believe that any of those things were taking place, we would have taken the appropriate action to ensure our seller didn't get caught up in it. We did in fact cancel the listing before receiving this complaint and even agreed not to be paid a future commission that we are legally entitled to based on standard NWMLS listing agreements, although the buyers agent did not, so we technically owe the buyer's agent his commission out of our own pocket (not the seller's pocket) should the buyer purchase the property down the road. And we wouldn't even be a part of that transaction or receive any sale proceeds to pay that from. We too, had no idea that the buyer's purchase was contingent upon the sale of their other home. That is a crucial items to be aware of here. In fact, we were told numerous times by the buyer's agent that it was NOT contingent on the buyer selling their house and nowhere in their purchase offer paperwork was a home sale contingency. The lender (who I believe this issue ultimately goes back to) provided us with a pre-approval letter for their buyer for us to review before agreeing to sell the property to the buyer and provided poor communication throughout the transaction. At no point did the lender or buyer disclose that the funds required were coming from another home sale that needed to take place for the sale to close. The buyer was from out of state and the buyer's agent wasn't even privy to the fact that the buyer needed to sell their house in order to come up with the funds to close. He was told multiple times that they had the money to perform. In regards to the delay in the sign post going up and the information on the 24/7 recorded info hotline not being accurate within the first week on the market, I take full responsibility for that and am truly sorry. That is not the level of service we stand for. We outsource our sign installations to a local sign post installer and he got lost trying to find the property the first time as it's in a rural location. Additionally, based on new government regulations, prior to being able to install the post, it is required that "locate" be called in to check for any underground utilities and approve the site before the sign installer can sink the post. This needless to say has been creating delays in sign installs recently and we've recently come up with a plan to get around these kind of delays in the future. Lastly, we were very much so protective of our sellers when we came to an agreement to extend the closing date when the buyer needed more time. Rather than doing a traditional extension where all parties simply agree to extend the date and nothing else changes, we proactively made the buyer forfeit their entire earnest money deposit up front and also charged them for not only the holding costs of our client's cost to keep the house for the extra two weeks, but also any moving costs, horse boarding costs, etc that were associated with the house not being sold. There was over $7,000 in funds from the buyer that were paid to the seller to protect them from further damages. The real kicker at the end of this transaction was that even though the buyer's home sale closed and he had the funds he now needed, the buyer lost his job THE DAY OF closing and wasn't able to move forward with purchasing the house anymore.