My broker is dragging his feet. Can I contact the realtor directly?
I had a home inspection done about a month ago. The results from that inspection revealed problems with the roof and ac unit. After the inspection I asked for my broker to contact the sellers to ask them to agree to the repairs prior to closing. Previously we had already negotiated a 00 repair budget.
Now a month has gone by and I still have not received any word from the seller about the repairs. I have been calling my broker repeatedly every day to check on this matter. I now suspect he is auto rejecting my calls because every time I call it rings once then one half ring and goes directly to voice mail. Calling his office directly and getting the secretary is now the only way I can get him on the phone.
I get a hold of him and he says I can just hire a crew to fix it since we still have the 00 repair budget (I was told by him a month ago not to do this...). So after calling and scheduling an appointment with the ac repair guys my broker conveniently, or refuses, to let them in the house after he tells me that he was on his way. The repair guys end up letting themselves in after waiting an hour which the broker never showed up.
Turns out there is major problems with the ac unit due to a freon leak, but because it's cold now they won't be able to fix it until warmer weather. This could have been fixed the month prior. All of this is happening and my broker says that he still has not had any contact with the sellers realtor.
I have lost faith in my broker and am wondering if can contact the seller's realtor directly and get this resolved or if, since I am under contract, I have to go through my broker?
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If your broker works for an agency with other brokers call the agency and tell them your broker is not returning your calls. The head agent should be pretty concerned.
Officially in most states, both brokers actually work for the seller. So you should certainly feel free if you are in one of these states to call the selling broker directly and find out what he thinks the status of various things is.
There should be a flow of things that have to happen to close a deal, which include formal and written communications back and forth between you and the seller (through your brokers generally) called contingencies. All of these have time limits and some of those contingencies are considered "satisfied" if a certain, usually fairly brief, time passes without a written response. You need to find out what contingencies exist on your sale, which ones you need to do something about, and when you need to do something about them. If your broker is not communicating with you, you are probably running out of time on some of these and may find yourself contractually obligated to close on the house without the additional repair budget.
You need to get on top of this. You need to understand what contingencies are there, who needs to respond by when, and what the status of your contract is. I did sell a house once where the buyer at closing asked about the repairs he had asked for. I responded, correctly, that I had sent a response to his broker on time saying there were a few I would do, and a few I would not do. That was it, I was not obligated to do the repairs he asked for that I told him, through his broker, that I would not do. And the buyer was obligated to pony up the agreed selling price at closing, and did so.
You need to find everything you signed, understand what it obligates you to, and not let stuff fall through the cracks.
I don't know what kind of contract you signed, but hopefully there was some verbiage protecting you in that contract, and your agent can be fired. If not, there are plenty of ways to give negative feedback about the agent. Your best option is to find out what legal remedies are available (that's not a topic for this site) and have a very frank conversation with this person who is supposed to be working for you, but doesn't seem to be looking out for your best interests.
I'd say go ahead and call up the seller's realtor. Explain that you've been getting extremely poor service from your broker, and you want to make sure the deal doesn't fall apart. Hopefully, the realtor will either help you deal with the lazy broker or bypass him altogether. Whether or not he ultimately gets paid is between him and the listing realtor.
Until the closing, you should not be hiring people to fix things on the house. Either the seller fixes it (perhaps with you paying for the repairs at closing, if that is what is agreed to), or you buy the house as-is and fix the problems after purchase.
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