My Cautionary Tale

I'm a officer in the US Army.  I've dedicated my life to serving our great nation for 24 years throughout the war on terror.  I've served two tours in Iraq, have an amazing wife and family, live in a wonderful community and am blessed by God everyday to live in this great nation of ours.  I'm not famous nor wish to be, I have everything I want and need in my God, my family, friends and my freedom.  I'm just a regular guy that goes to work every day to earn a paycheck to support his family.  In general, I give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they prove that they aren't trustworthy.  

I believe I have been blessed to avoid more scams than the average American.  I learned from an early age about the dangers of credit cards and borrowing money, how to budget, how to live within my means, save for a rainy day, and save to empower interest to work for me rather than against me.  Using these principles has allowed my family to live comfortably and save a retirement.  

We are at the end of our military career, I say "we" because my wife and her support have been essential to our combined success and my ability to serve.  In November of 2024 we started looking for a place to land after retirement close to family.  We found some homes we were interested in and viewed one via the selling Realtor.  He confirmed what we had noticed on Zillow, that it was still a seller's market despite high interest rates and that houses were going fast mostly at asking price.  

We continued to watch the market and two months later my wife found another home she was interested in and pressed the "I'm interested" button on Zillow.  The next day she saw the house was "pending sale" and was saddened.  Shortly thereafter, we got a call from a local Agent X in American Fork that asked if we still wanted to view it despite its "pending sale" status.  We agreed and he showed it to us remotely.  We liked the house but it already was pending sale and was out of our budget anyway.  Agent X asked us if there were any other properties we wanted to see.  My wife told him of another property and he drove over there and showed us that one too as there was no one living there.  After viewing, we decided against it.  Agent "X" was friendly and engaging and had military background he mentioned to connect with me.  

He never asked us if we wanted his help finding homes nor presented us with a contract of non-representation or representation as he was required before showings.  I didn't know this at the time, but a contract of non-representation or representation is now mandatory for Realtors as as part of a settlement to an antitrust lawsuit that the National Association of Realtors lost in 2024.  Part of the reason this new rule was stipulated in the settlement was because agents were using these viewing services for "free" as a means to either pressure buyers directly or indirectly though feelings of obligation for the showings.  By requiring potential buyers to sign an agreement of non-representation, agents disclose the fact that viewers are in no way bound or required to work for or continue any relationship with the agent unless they truly desire to.

Agent X never mentioned this requirement, just showed us the homes.   He used a lot of "we" language as well.  He asked us what homes "we" were interested in simply presuming that we wanted to use his services.  As he had just taken time to show us these two homes, without realizing it, my wife and I were indeed starting to feel obligated to use him, the very reason the new rule was stipulated.  As such, I told him what price range we were looking for and he said that he would look out for homes.  

A week passed without hearing from Agent X and my wife found another home she was interested in and wanted to view it.  Instead of calling the selling agent like we had done before Agent X, we decided to call him because it was easy.  He set up the viewing and this time my wife liked the home and expressed such throughout the walk-through.  Agent X spent a lot of time talking about various issues in the home where he thought "we" could get concessions from the seller.  Specifically, he told us that "we" could likely get $15-20K in concessions for the 30 year old heating and cooling system alone.  Up until then I was fairly neutral about signing with him as our agent.  I had used buyer's agents under the impression they were required and didn't know that wasn't the case anymore.   Like most everyone out there still, I was under the impression it was a "free to me" service paid by the seller anyway.  What I didn't know was how the the rules changed due to the antitrust lawsuit in 2024.  Specifically, now all sellers and selling agents can opt out of paying the buyer's agent altogether or negotiate any terms agreeable.   Therefore, If you choose to sign with a buyer's agent, that agent has to convince the seller or seller's agent to agree to pay for their compensation.  Otherwise, the buyer is responsible to pay ALL fees to the buyer's agent or wait out the 3 month exclusivity contract and lose the house you are interested in.  

So in practice, what happens now is that most buyers still contract with a buyer's agent largely because they don't yet know that they don't need to, it is just the "easy" button.  In 2024, 89% people still used a buyer's agent.  Most people, like me, still think it is required because it was basically required for decades due to the monopoly NAR held over the MLS database and how % based fee structures were tied to that database.  Further, I don't think most people realize, at least I didn't, that most if not all homes available for sale on MLS are now also on Zillow too because agents typically put them on Zillow after listing them on MLS.  Zillow might actually have more homes for sale because "for sale by owner homes" might only show on Zillow or other "for sale by owner" sites.  As such, the monopoly of MLS as the only means to bring buyer's and sellers together has evaporated through the years due to sites like Zillow.  

Realtors will tell you that MLS is still a big advantage because it gets you more specific sales numbers, details, and home facts etc. which I believe has merit, but not the magnitude of advantage they claim.  Zillow tracks the market remarkably well and key features of the homes are listed there as well; certainly well enough to come up with a price point that will sell.  I know this first hand because after my bad experience with Agent X and a previous bad experience with a seller's agent in 2023, I decided to sell my other investment property by myself (FSBO) in order to use a 1031 Exchange into this new property in Utah.  I had never sold my own property before nor done a 1031 exchange before, but it was not the rocket science process I assumed, I learned all I really needed to know in about two weeks and in the end it was a great experience.  Most of what I've learned and links are found here in this website.  in the end, it saved me $15k in Realtor fees, $45k in capital gains and sped up the process significantly.  For those interested, here is my very positive FSBO and 1031 exchange experience.  

Again, I didn't know that seller's no longer are required to pay and that there really isn't much need for a buyer's agent anymore.  Now you know more than I did. Please spread the word.  As mentioned, the last time I sold a house prior to my Good Story was in 2023.  I started that sale as a "for sale by owner" FSBO too.  Within a day or two, a Realtor offered his services.  He convinced me he could sell my house for $5-10k more than I was asking only to end up selling it for $20k less.  So I sold it for a loss and he had me agree to pay the full 6% realtor fees (another -$16k) for the privilege of his services.  All in all, a net -$36k down from asking in a market where receiving asking price was common.  This is where I learned that there is no recourse no matter how badly and Agent performs.  They purposely create their contracts to offer vague services and make it so there is zero way to fail.  If you get a bad product you can get your money back at any store, but there is no such thing as a return or compensation from a Realtor.  For the $16k I paid, I received some paperwork, a referral for a lawyer and inspector, 2 showings of my house, one open house, and 1 botched negotiation - maybe 15 hours of work.  Not a good value for any rational human being.  

So while I had a negative seller's agent experience, I previously had decent experiences with two buyers' agents, so I wasn't completely against the idea of signing with Agent X especially since he just told me that he could get me $15k in concessions.  If he could have delivered on the $15k, that would have been value added, no question.  At this point, I hadn't seriously considered that I could just negotiate directly with the seller without an agent and tell her that my offer comes without the need to pay any seller agent fee, an amount equal to potentially 3% of the sale or $22,200.  

Think about $22k for a minute.  That is 22 iphone pros, that is more than my master's degree cost me, that is the cost of a small new car.  That is what he asked in exchange for a few hours of superfluous work.   

Of course, Agent X never disclosed that he was superfluous, that it would have been in my best interest to just give the seller a quick call and have a conversation.  This would have been one of those instances where my best interest was to know I could negotiate down the asking price by potentially $22k by not using a buyer's agent.  That would have been better bargaining power than $15k for old appliances.  As it was, I was under the impression that having an "expert" to do the negotiation had a high likelihood to bring value as I was certainly no real estate expert.  Further, I was still under the false presumption that all sellers paid the buyer's agent fees because Agent X never disclosed the new rules under which he was obligated to operate.  

Fiduciary  Duties? Prove it.

This brings me to the point where I want to talk about the legal obligations of Real Estate Agents, or what they call "fiduciary duties".  A fiduciary duty is a legal obligation that requires a person or entity to act in the best interest of another party (buyer) in lieu of their self interest.  The buyer's agent and Broker have the fiduciary duty to act in the buyer's or seller's best interest to include loyalty, obedience, full disclosure, confidentiality, reasonable care and other duties required by law to include honesty.  I invite you to keep these fiduciary duties in mind as I tell the rest of my story, specifically the parts about "honesty", "full disclosure", and "acting in the buyer's best interest".  Thus far, I'll point out, that Agent X has already failed to act in the my best interest by not disclosing that he was required to enter into a non-representation contract and explain why.  Specifically, that it was required because the NAR lost an antitrust lawsuit that completely changed the rules of how Real Estate transactions operate.  On that note, he should be officially censured or have his license revoked by the Utah Association of Realtors.  I'm not sure if they actually hold their own accountable though.  Call me dubious, given the fact that for decades they have been fully complicit in the practices that led to the NAR lawsuit in the first place.  But I digress. 

Further, Agent X also misled me regarding his ability to negotiate concessions.  This deception led me to believe he could bring value to the deal that he never intended to act on, more on that later.  He also failed to disclose to me that the seller is actually a Realtor as well.  It would have been in my best interest to know that I could just work with her, that she could do the contracts and we share the $22k he insisted on for payment.  All of these things would have been "in my best interest" to have been fully disclosed to me at this point. Withholding this information was dishonest and 100% self serving.  I can empathize that he wanted to be part of this deal and if he actually was a decent Realtor might have been able to bring some value to the deal.  That said, an honest person fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility would have transparently presented my options and then attempted to convince me why going with him is in my best interest.  This would have been informed consent, rather than a scam.  A scammer withholds information from their ignorant victims out of fear that the truth will prevent them from giving the scammer his windfall.

If your service relies on subterfuge, gain from withholding information at the expense of those you purportedly serve, you offer no service at all, you are a liar and a swindler.

Again, it was his legal fiduciary duty to fully disclose my options, yet he did not.  Agent X was dishonest by omission.  He placed his interest above that of his buyer.  Agent X wanted an easy $22k windfall for minimal effort.  In my case, this was a home that he did not help find and he added no value in offering the seller her asking price on my behalf.  Anyone can order a hamburger for the price on the menu.  

I've come to the conclusion that Agent X has been doing this for so long that he must truly believe what he does it not dishonest.  Only a sociopath could live with themselves otherwise.  He has done this to hundreds of people, most none the wiser because of the "seller pays my fees" angle, a near perfect scam.  He takes advantage of the ignorance of others as a means to make his living.  I think he might even have effectively deceived himself into thinking with hubristic narcissism that by not disclosing these options to me he was in some twisted way acting in my best interest.  He does have 18 years of experience after all.  But what of his fiduciary obligations!?  He is required by his contract to abide by them or the contract is void.  I later tried to hold him accountable by confronting him directly as well as his Broker.  I've learned from that experience that they have no conscience at all.  They offered no concession, no return of funds, didn't even try to justify the value of their services, just said "you signed the contract" so you have to pay.  

The truth that there is no way to hold an agent accountable on the grounds of failure to act in your best interest or on the grounds of non disclosure no matter how much they lie to you, withhold information, or act against your interest for their own benefit unless you literally record every conversation or put every communication in writing.  There is no such thing as trust, honor, accountability or value in one's word among thieves.  More on that later, but these are the generic answers I received when I presented how they did not act in my interest and fully disclose information as they should have: "well, you signed the contract and are responsible", "that is not what I recall I said" or "its not my fault you didn't know about the antitrust lawsuit" or "no, doing what I did was acting in your best interest".  

So unless you want to spend a lot of money on a lawyer, then there is no recourse.  They know this, they have gone through it with every other person who became aware of their scam, tried to get out of the contract or get their money back, or sought any other kind of recourse.  These individuals learned what I did, there is no such thing as a return, refund, or concession no matter how badly they fail or mis-represent.  They ensure this in the fine print of the one-sided contract.  They require in the contract that you go to Mediation before getting lawyers involved.  But even Mediation means one more fee stacked up with all of the rest of the home sale piggy-back fees you are already paying.  

You then realize that mediation likely will not help anyway because you don't have recorded proof of their lies and failures so you will again be in a situation of "he said/she said".  Further, they purposely word the description of their "services" in such vague terms that they could do anything or nothing for you and still fulfill their responsibilities per the contract as long as you ultimately purchase the home.  I'd post the whole contract but the Utah Association of Realtors put a legal disclaimer at the bottom that it wasn't to be shared, but if you have your own copy I encourage you to look. 

What business doesn't refund you when they fail to give you the goods and services promised or fail in their proclaimed fiduciary duty?  A scam.

 In the end, they have you over a carefully word barrel in the form of a one-sided contract and walk away with your money.  I say "your money" but traditionally and I believe most often still, until most people become aware of the lawsuit changes, it is the seller that technically pays them, which is another key to the scam's success through the years.

Beware of "Free"

The first two times I bought a house I used a buyer Agent.  Like most of you, I thought that this was a pretty good deal.  I get "professional" expertise for "free".  The truth is that nothing in this life is free.  There is always a price and, in this case, both you and the seller pay, but in different ways.  If the seller pays the buyer’s agent fee, the only thing they get out of the $22k they give up is a buyer to buy their house.  If the seller is having a hard time finding buyers then this might be a good deal, but if a buyer comes to the seller on their own without the baggage of a contracted agent, that, of course, is a better deal.  In my case, the seller would have saved up to $22200 had I just told Agent X "no thank you" to the buyer-broker enslavement document and talked to the seller myself. 

Secondly, having your agent paid by the seller is lunacy.  As soon as the seller agreed to pay my agent a percent of the final sale, then my agent who is supposed to be working for me is fully incentivized to work against my best interest to benefit himself and the seller who is paying his commission.  We've already shown that Agent X doesn't care at all about his supposed fiduciary duty to act in my best interest, so what is stopping him from encouraging you to make the highest offer possible on the house?  He literally said the following to me reference the price, "What about adding another 10K and put this thing to bed?".  

This arrangement is the perfect scam, because if "your" agent fails you, it doesn't matter because the seller is paying so the buyer seemingly has no grounds to demand money back for failures in service.  On the other hand, the seller who is paying them the $22k (out of the money you are giving her) has no say in anything at all because Agent X is supposedly working for the buyer.  

And for more people to the innocent people that gone through this process like I had two times before, they likely have no idea what right looks like anyway so are just along for the ride oblivious to how much they could have saved by excluding the buyers Agent altogether.  See, its the perfect scam.  

Thus far you might be thinking, "but my agent was honest and fair and did a great job in earning their commission", to this I would ask you to go back into your records and see what exact services they offered and actually performed for all that money they took from you and the seller, unless they worked for weeks and weeks to find you the perfect home in your budget by pulling up every stone, no buyer's agent is worth in my opinion more than $1000 for their concierge services.  I can concede that there are likely some honest agents that do offer full disclosure and transparency, but I've never met one.  And even to them I'll still say: 

all agents who asked for % based compensation and use MLS  and historical precedent to coerce their buyers and sellers to agree to these terms are complicit in perpetuating this scam and facilitating this travesty in contractual malpractice.  

Sure, your buyers agent will still claim to work for you, but once they get the seller to agree to pay them, you have lost any leverage you had and become means to windfall.  They will now get paid regardless of anything they do or don’t do for you unless you walk away and give up your earnest money, they've trapped you with no real recourse.  There is zero, absolutely zero incentive to work hard or negotiate in good faith the house sale price or concessions.  None.  They pretend they are doing you a favor by having the seller pay their fees but that is just their means to an easy windfall at both your and the seller’s expense.   

So, at the end of the tour, with a big smile, Agent X asked us what we thought.  He already knew though, based on my wife's comments throughout.   We told him the magic words that we would like to put in an offer.  Agent X said "Great, I'll put together a market analysis so 'we' can come up with a good offer".  He still had not asked if we wanted representation or presented us with any contract nor explained our options.  Later that day, he emailed us the market analysis consisting of 3 houses.  It was nothing we didn't already know.  The report included two of the houses we had already tracked on Zillow from arrival to sale.  He told us that 99% of the homes are going for asking price and recommended that we offer asking price.  Again, nothing new.  

At this point, Agent X continued to just act as if he were already our contracted agent and sent us a combined Exclusive Buyer-Broker Agreement Contract and buyer-seller offer.   He asked us to look it over and that he'd call to explain it later.  We, unfortunately, didn't read it before he presented it to us to which I'll eternally refer to as one of the most expensive errors of my life - Dave Ramsey refers to these types of choices as "stupid tax".  To be fair, even if I had read it, I'm not sure I would have recognized how bad of an offer he was proposing without any reference point to know what a good deal is.  I was a caveman looking at an airplane not fully understanding the implications or what I was looking at.  I had no idea what services he was actually offering in return for insanely excessive compensation. 

We later joined with Agent X online as he "explained" the contract.  By "explained", I mean rather than going line by line and explaining everything, he expertly jumped around all of the different pages of the contract pointing us to all the things we would not disagree with while skipping the parts that were actually in our best interest to fully understand.  He did point out the section that showed that the owner was responsible to pay 3% and $650 extra for his services, but "don't worry the seller usually pays for that.  

I thought at the time, "good thing the seller is paying, because, I don't understand why they think they deserve $650 on top of the undisclosed thousands of dollars that are obfuscated in the little 3% number."  Agent X then explained that "occasionally the seller will only pay 2.5% but that is just something we agents have to negotiate".  Yes, he completely misled us to the fact that we were on the hook for any and all compensation in the event the seller did not agree to pay his broker fee and that we were responsible for the $650 outside of the other insane compensation he was requesting.  

At the time, even though I read the words "buyer is responsible", my past experience agreed with Agent X's explanation that, "yes, it is the seller who will pay."  At this time, I had not yet calculated what dollar amount that 3% truly equated to either, I knew it was in the thousands, but had not idea that he was actually asking for $22200.  Now that I have perspective, he asked me to pay the equivalent of $1500 for a $15 hamburger to make a contract.   He asked $22200 to make a phone call to the seller to tell her that his client is willing to pay her asking price, to give me few referrals for services that took him a few minutes and then arrange an inspection that he attended and that was pretty much it.  I was fully ignorant of my ability to negotiate terms and Agent X, of course, never pointed me to the disclosure in the contract where it mentioned this fact.  

I also didn't consider at the time the ludicrousy of requesting full compensation when Agent X did nothing to find the home.  Agent X had no qualms doing so though.  An honest person would have said, "you know, normally I charge 3% for my services, but as you already found the home, and because I wasn't the one who brought the buyer to the seller, I don't feel comfortable charging you or the seller $22750".  The dishonest entitlement at mine and the seller's expense is astounding.  I sell things on the internet and sometimes a person that buys my products pays for more for shipping than they need to and I feel obligated to refund them the difference though they'd never know the difference.  It is the honest and decent thing to do after all.  So you can imagine my outrage when I learned that my agent, who is under fiduciary obligation to have my best interest in mind, charged me the highest amount asked by any agent for services possible for a house he never helped find while knowing perfectly well I would have been able to call the owner up offered her her asking price and locked in a sale on my own.  

Further, to add insult to injury, I find out later that he failed to mention that there are plenty of agents out there that will do services for as low as .5% or a la carte services for reasonable fees.  He never mentioned any of these options.  Had Agent X had my best interest in mind, he would have pointed this out and tried to convince me he is better.  As it was, I was under the false impression that Agent X actually cared about me and was showing me the most important matters in the contract that would have been in my best interest.  Even when reading the contract later myself, I didn't fully comprehend the significance or implications until I researched the topic and learned about the different types of compensation arrangements especially since NAR was found in breach of antitrust laws.  Agent X took advantage of my ignorance at my expense.  

When I presented this grievance to Agent X's broker and requested out of the contract or compensation for failures, he responded to the effect “We can’t be responsible for educating everybody on every little detail of what goes on in the Real Estate world, all of these things you are complaining about are common knowledge anyway, you should have known”.  Nothing but the best service for $22850! 

While it is possible I'm the only person left on the planet naive enough to fall for this scheme, I doubt it.  The fact that 80% of buyers are still using Agents demonstrates that the information in this website is not common knowledge and dishonest Agents are containing to scam home sellers and buyers out of Millions if not Billions each year.  Thus my motivation and mission to educate everyone I can starting in American Fork Utah.

Purposeful Obfuscation

On the note of compensation requested for services, there are at least two reasons that Realtors use % of final sales price in how they request compensation.  The first is that it scales up with the price of the home despite offering no additional service regardless of price.  Their service remains the perpetually vague service of "help locate and negotiate acquisition" regardless of price, no exaggeration.  No honest person would do this. 

How would you feel if you went to get some ice-cream and you see they charged the person in front of you $5 for their ice-cream but then charged you $50 for the exact same ice-cream only to learn later that you were charged for something completely unrelated to the value of ice-cream like your height relative to the height of the previous customer.  Not good.  That is what they are doing though.  The Buyer agent does not do anything more for the $50k house sale vs the $1M house sale yet charges you 20x more just because the house costs more.  

The second purpose is to obfuscate how much they are actually requesting for agent/broker fees.  3% presents as a deceptively small number.  They are attempting (and have been maddeningly successful) at obfuscating the real amount they are requiring you to pay for their service (3% is $12,000 on a $300,000 home or if you are fool enough to accept it, $27,000 on an $900,000 home).  You see, they give you the exact same vague largely superfluous service for every sale but charge you more if your home is more expensive.  For perspective, agents are basically a niche concierge service.  A typical concierge would need to work 533 hrs at $45/hr to earn $24000. Most buyers agents likely do less than 20 hours of work, many less than 10 if the buyer found the house which is increasingly the case due to Zillow.  Who can sleep at night charging this you might ask?  Realtors. On average, the US pays 6 times more for real estate service than they pay in the UK, that is 600% for you Realtor % lovers. 

What is it exactly that you do again for the $22,850 you are asking for?

Agent X never did tell us exactly what he does or would do for us as our agent.  We just assumed he was a "professional" and just take care of everything.  So what is "everything"?  After learning of his deception, I went back and actually read the contract completely seeking the answer to the question "what is it exactly that the buyer's agent does?".  The only description of services the agent would provide in exchange for the $22850 in broker compensation was the following purposely vague statement “Buyer hereby retains the Company and Buyer’s Agent to locate and negotiate for the acquisition of a property for the agreed upon duration of time below or upon the closing of the acquisition of a property”.  That's it.  No exaggeration.  There are no specifics to what any of those words mean, no metrics for success or failure, no way to hold them accountable for anything, no way to fire them, no way to say they didn't succeed, nothing.  It doesn't even say the agent needs to to find the buyer his property technically, they could just find a property for anyone or no one and negotiate it's acquisition for a 3rd party and technically they would be following their contract and the buyer would still be responsible to pay them even if it was the buyer who went out and found a house and negotiated and closed the sale himself.  This is literally insane as written.  Who creates one-sided scam trap contracts like this?  Realtors.  Here are some other amazing finds in the contract:

• Section 6: “The Buyer is advised not to rely on the Company, or any agents of the Company, for a determination regarding the physical or legal condition of the property…”  If this is the case, why do they give opinions on these matters at all? Agent X had already given many opinions on the physical conditions of the property he showed to include the fact that he claimed he could get $15k in concessions for the older appliances.  At no time before or since did agent X bring warn me or bring to the my attention that I should not rely on any of his opinions about the condition of the property.  Further, "Any recommendations for third party services made by the Company or the Buyer’s Agent do not guarantee the Buyer’s satisfaction in the use of those third party services and should not be seen as a warranty of any kind as to the level of service that will be provided by the third parties. The Buyer is advised that it is up to the Buyer in the Buyer’s sole discretion to choose third party services that meet the needs of the Buyer and not to rely on any recommendations given by the Company or the Buyer’s Agent."  

Again, he never informed me that it is the Broker's position that I shouldn't rely on his "expertise" in referring me to the best the local services.

• Section 8: “The Buyer agrees not to be a representative or member of any class of claimants or act as a private attorney general in litigation, arbitration, or administrative proceeding with respect to any claim arising out of this Exclusive Buyer-Broker Agreement.”  

Who needs to put this in their contract? Only bad service.

So, as the contract did not outline any specifics as to what the agent will do for his requested $22,850, I took the liberty to document it myself throughout the sales process.

What a Buyer's Agent actually does for his $22,850.   In two words - concierge service. They claim expertise in home negotiation and invaluable knowledge about neighborhoods and schools and services that they then tell you to not pay attention to in the contract.  But to be of true value to the buyer, that advice and negotiation would have to provide $22,850 of value to the buyer which is impossible under most circumstances and they know this or they wouldn't obfuscate the compensation numbers they are requesting and give no specifics on the service they purportedly provide.  In my case, Agent X knew full well that the current market goes at asking price, yet he dishonestly injected himself into the process to get a cut.  ANYONE can call up someone and tell them they are willing to pay what they ask.  There is no negotiation needed unless there are other offers, yet even in that scenario he successfully botched it up making his efforts in the bottom 1% of negotiations.  None of the other "services" listed below are worth more than a $35/hr concierge service especially considering the opportunity costs he forced me to concede.

1. Find a home.  Value received by me.  ($0). We found our own home.  Real estate agents are to act with honesty with the buyer’s best interest in mind.  At no point did Agent X offer to reduce his requested compensation due to the fact that he was providing zero home finding services, had Agent X been honest and had the buyer’s best interest in mind as was his duty, he would have offered to reduce his requested fee.  Nothing but the best for $22850.

2. Acquisition-Negotiation: Value received by the buyer (-$5000): Agent X made a few phone calls to the seller making offers on the home on the buyer’s behalf. This negotiation resulted in the buyer paying $5000 more than the original asking price.  Over 99% of homes in Utah go for the asking price, thus Agent X's negotiation performance was in the bottom 1%.  I learned later of the condition that prevented the seller from accepting my offer of asking price immediately. This concern led to two days of delay and a competing offer coming in for $5k more.  Had I not used Agent X just had a conversation with the seller on day one, I could have resolved the condition immediately before the other offer came in.  Having a middle man that didn't fully understand what I was willing to negotiate and failing to come back and offer solutions after the initial failure led to my paying $5000 over asking price.  Nothing but the best for $22850.

3. Acquisition-ensuring all requirements are met before closing: Value received: (-$150 with frustration and stress).  The buyer texted Agent X to request an estimate on the age of the roof and he did not get an answer for 3 days after a 2nd solicitation from the buyer the answer received was “nobody knows”.  Not helpful for an insurance quote.  Further, Agent X coordinated to use his favorite home inspector which by his Broker's contract advises me that I should not rely on.  The inspector charged the buyer $630 which is about $150 more than what many other inspectors were willing to charge for a 3600 sqft home which was not in the best interest of his buyer.  Further, Agent X mis-scheduled the inspection and failed to inform the buyer of his mistake until 15 minutes after the expected inspection time proving his unreliability.  Nothing but the best for $22850.

4. Acquisition-negotiating concessions due to findings on inspection: Value received ($0), value claimed by Agent X: $15-$20K.  This misrepresentation of skill cost the buyer the opportunity cost of negotiating down the cost of the property up to the full buyer’s broker fee of (3%, $22200).  This misrepresentation cost the buyer tremendously. Agent X never did attempt to negotiate down for the age of the appliances as he boasted he could.  Worse, when I confronted him about it I learned that he never intended to talk down the seller with respect to the age of the utilities and attempted to gas-light me into believing he never claimed he could.  I have 3 witnesses to Agent X's claim during the initial home walk through and I have texts proving after the fact that I was fully expecting him to deliver on this claim.  This false claim was the primary reason I chose to sign the contract. Nothing but the best for $22850.

5. Buyer-Broker Contract creation: Value for Buyer:$0, Value for Broker: $22,850, opportunity cost for the buyer: $27850 and frustration, anger, feelings of betrayal, documented medical issues due to the stress.  The buyer broker-agreement as previously mentioned is completely one-sided. It does not benefit the buyer at all.  Every paragraph is specially designed to give every advantage to the agent and broker to include using purposely vague language so that no person reading the contract would understand what responsibilities and services the broker would provide other than the vague and generic description of “find a property” and “negotiate the acquisition”.  The use of this contract is predatory in nature, using niche expertise not to benefit those they purportedly serve but to take advantage of anyone not intimately familiar with real estate or contracts.  The buyer was one of these ignorant masses who made the mistake of trusting Agent X to have his best interest in mind as is required by fiduciary obligation.  The issue is that this is not just Agent X who is at fault.  This is the contract that this broker uses for all of their agreements.  As far as I know, this is the contract that the entire Utah Association of Realtors uses as it has their logo on the top. If this is the case, the whole system is egregiously complicit in this travesty of preying on ignorance of unwitting buyers and sellers.  Nothing but the best for $22850.

6. Buyer-Seller contract:  Value received, $0. The buyer didn’t need Agent X to create the buyer-seller contract, the seller as an Agent would have done it for free and made the whole sale happen had Agent X never inserted himself into the process unnecessarily.  Agent X withheld this information purposely before I signed the contract for his sole benefit. Nothing but the best for $22850.

7. Coordinating the closing: Value received $20 and the buyer had to initiate it himself.  The buyer called up the title company one week before closing, and nothing had been coordinated other than the closing “might” happen.  The buyer initiated action at this point with the title company.  After that a clerk called him and asked him which home warranty he wanted to go with.  A home warranty that was offered by the seller initially but Agent X claimed he was the one that requested it.  I believe the seller. Nothing but the best for $22850.

8. Conclusion of value received for the buyer agreeing to contract with Agent X for his requested $22,850:

   1. Finding a home: $0 - buyer found the home

   2. Acquiring the home:  -$5000 in initial negotiations

   3. Total total opportunity cost for contracting with Agent X and his Brokerage in this purchase, -$27,830.

If anyone were to solicit anyone of sober mind if they would be willing to pay them $22,850 for the services offered as summarized in (8) above, no one would agree as it would be insane to agree to pay that amount for the services provided, especially in my circumstances where the seller was an agent herself.  Agent X knew this and yet he along with most all Real Estate Agents willfully obfuscates the real dollar value of compensation requested behind vague language to mask what they are asking in compensation.  They then shoot for the moon when contracting with people who largely have no context of how to negotiate a dollar amount for unknown services offered because there are no metrics, just vague descriptions and promises. 

 Again, if your business relies on withholding information from those you purported serve while claiming you are acting in their best interest, then you and your business are swindlers and certainly not acting in the best fiduciary interest of your client.  If you can't provide value in the face of transparency then you offer no real service.  No amount of justification about costs or overhead or whatever your excuse makes this deception acceptable.  Again, if you can't convince a buyer or seller to willingly engage with you under the conditions of full transparency then you are a fraud.

I can think of another business model that works on similar principles:  The call centers in Nigeria that convince retired people to wire their retirements to them come to mind.  

In the end

I confronted Agent X after his failure to negotiate the home sale and any concessions, I asked him what in the world I'm paying him for?  He replied condescendingly without hesitation, "your not paying me, the seller is".  

There you have it folks, summed up perfectly, the essence of the scam in a nutshell admitted by the scammer in chief, Agent X.  

At this point, I contacted Agent X's Broker, Broker Gangster.  I told Broker Gangster that i do not want to work with Agent X anymore and that I wanted to terminate the contract on terms of failures in fiduciary duty to represent my best interests, failures to negotiate, and unethical practices of luring me in without disclosing the need to sign a non-representation contract unless he would be willing to offer me compensation equal to the value that Agent X had claimed he could negotiate for concession, $15000, as well as the $5000 loss on the sales price.  This would leave these swindlers with $2850 that they did not deserve for botched services rendered.  In other words, I demanded a refund for his ethical and professional failure as an agent.  I even offered that if the Broker would stand by his Agent and make this right that I would be gracious to not bring this issue public on reviews and social media etc.  He told me that he would look into it and talk with Agent X.  

He called me later that day and told me that "Agent X remembers things differently than you do, so we will not give you anything for your grievances, nor release you from your contract.  We will continue to the final closing as scheduled without termination of contract because I couldn't prove that Agent X failed in his fiduciary duty.  He said  "Look, you got what you want, a nice house, lets just move on to closing."  To which I told him that I wanted to do mediation as was required in the contract.  To this, Broker Gangster said, 

"Look, you aren't going to win this ok, you just aren't.  We've been down this road with others just like you" (now that is a shocker!).  He continued,  "This is how it will go at mediation anyway, we will go to mediation and they will look at our lock tight contract and you will lose, you signed it, so give it up and move on, you've got your nice house and we all got what we wanted in the end.  Oh, and to not make a big deal of it, but your asking for money in exchange for not giving us bad reviews is extortion and that feels bad".  

So, yes, Agent Gangster skipped over the part where I was asking for compensation because they failed in fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities and services and accused me of extorsion because I offered to not take it public if he would make things right and he did it to strong arm me to drop the issue and not go to mediation.  He clearly has been down this road many times, earned the merit badge and has the script down pat.  

That is the problem though isn't it, he thinks that because he gets away with it, he is justified in the scam.  I was set to go to Mediation anyway, but my wife requested I not pursue it further.  So Agent X and Broker Gangster used their one-sided full of obfuscation to steal $22850 from the seller and I.  I also lost an additional $5000 due to his poor negotiation skill.  Again, the way their contracts are structured, there is absolutely zero metrics for success or failure and they do not care one whit about their supposed fiduciary responsibility.  What a steller business and service.  American Fork and Pleasant Grove beware.  Utah Association of Realtors, you do yourself proud with this representation.

So you see, I paid a "stupid tax" or more aptly an "ignorance tax" at the hands of those who by law are under responsibility to have my best interest in mind.  Please learn from my example and spread the word.  

This webpage is full of ideas on how to gain confidence to negotiate your own deals and hopefully we will see more deals like my good news story happening all over the country and Agent X and Broker Gangster will need to give up on their scam.

Or if you still want to brave it with a Realtor, here are tips on how to spot and nullify the one-sided contract.  The biggest take away for me is that I will never accept any % based compensation agreement again.  I highly recommend using set fees for specific things you actually want them to do for you, or hourly rates for services provided, again they are just providing concierge services.    

Also, be sure to have them include language in the contract so they are fully accountable to you, not the seller, so that when you lose out, they lose out or when you get more money, they get a bonus etc.

Next, check out the 8 Lessons learned from my experience, or How to negotiate a good contract, Do it Yourself, or find alternative help.