I've posted about it before, but my husband and I have been house hunting since late January. Not continuously, because we've been in attorney review now three times (we're in the third time now) and that always takes a while, and then the first two times the deal fell through.

The first time the sellers backed out because they got an even higher cash offer on the last day--the second time we had to back out because the appraisal came in $90,000 too low (yup--not kidding) and we couldn't make up that difference in cash because we were already putting down 25%.

We had been growing increasingly unhappy with our realtor and had talked about switching, but every time we were REALLY unhappy with him, we were in the middle of bidding on a house so it was kind of "too late".

1) he was not good about telling us about new listings. My husband had to find all of them on his own my obsessively searching the MLS himself. In the housing market here, houses are going under contract in a matter of days. So him not telling us about new things on the market was a problem.

2) he kept encouraging us to overbid. By a lot. Several times, he would tell us to just give a starting bid of $50,000 OVER asking price. We always refused and would bid what we were comfortable with, but he would always complain to us about it. One place we really liked we told him we wanted to bid asking price---he told us that was a waste of time because it would go for "way over" asking price, and since it was already the top of our price range, we didn't bid. We saw the seller's realtor at an open house later, and she told us the house went for asking and only had 2 bids. UGH.

3) we would ask him very simple questions that we wanted to know---asking for him to call the seller's agent to find out. For example: Which exact parking space came with the unit (some parking spaces have room for extra storage, some don't). He would say that was a waste of time and that we'd find out in attorney review. We would have to downright BADGER him to make these calls and he would only finally do it if we told him we would not bid on any house not knowing if it comes with a parking space or where the parking space was. The parking space issue is important in our area, because people will do shady things to say there is parking in a building--sometimes the parking is several blocks away, or outside parking at a lot nearby.

4). He reommended a lawyer to us that was HORRIBLE. We are half certain she is the reason we lost the first place. She was verrrry slow to complete anything, and we think the sellers panicked at how long attorney review was taking and went with the other offer that came up. Attorney review is supposed to last 3 days. With her, it lasted 2 weeks. She never returned my husband's calls or emails (he would literally have to call her 4-5 times). When we told him we wanted to switch attorneys, he made us feel bad for "wasting her time" and basically bullied us into staying with her.

5) this is a small thing, but he would always ask us to drive because parking is so bad where we live and he didn't want to find spaces or worry about parking tickets. So we would always drive and he would ride in the back. My husband would find all the places on GPS. Therefore, my hsuband was doing all the "realtor work".

So all of this background to say....in the last week of our house hunting (we'd already told him if we didn't find a place by the end of April, that we were going to continue renting), he did not show us anything we loved. One of my husband's friends emailed us about a unit coming up for sale in his condo building that was For Sale By Owner. My husband called the owner to ask if we could see the place and specifically asked if the seller was willing to work with an agent, explaining that we'd been using an agent for a while. The seller refused, saying the market is so good right now, he's not going to work with a realtor.

We saw the house, loved it, make an offer, and the other guy accepted. This all took 2 days. My husband told our realtor immediately that we were going for this For Sale By Owner, and that the seller wasn't willing to work with an agent.

I *do* feel guilty that the agent worked with us for a while and nothing he showed us worked out, in spite of the issues we were having with him. But obviously, we are going to do what's best for us, AND we'd already told him we were going to stop looking after last weekend, so he should have already expected that since we hadn't found a house with him, that he wouldn't be making a commission off us.

We could tell the realtor was mad at us---he sent my husband a series of wierd emails, saying we were making a mistake and probably this guy (the seller) was shady and that we should continue working with him (the realtor) and just pay him ourselves our of pocket. 2.5% commission on this condo would be almost $17,000 dollars, and that's money we don't have---since we are not sellers in this situation, we weren't planning on playing a realtor at all. Obviously, all our money will be going into our down payment.

Furthermore, he had nothing to do with this house and we don't feel he deserves a commission. We found a new lawyer on our own and are much happier with the new attorney. So, he did nothing for us in this sale.

My husband wanted to give him a thank you card and a check for maybe $500 for his work. I was on the fence about that.....

Then today, he texted my husband and asked for at least a 1/2 percent commission "for working with us so long". We do not have any signed agreements, so we are not liable for any payment.

WWYD? my husband and I both feel guilty that he's not getting a commission, but we feel like in this situation, there's nothing we can really do. I'm also kind of shocked he's trying to get money out of at all.

I've asked coworkers, who live here and are homeowners, and they say given the circumstances, not to pay anything at all---that realtors work on commission, not an hourly rate, and if they don't make a sale, they don't get commission..end of story.

The 1/2 % commission will still be almost $4000 by the way. Had we bought with him, WE would have paid nothing (the seller would have paid their realtor, which would have been split with our realtor).

I'm angry. But I don't know if I'm justified. To be clear, the market here is tight, so he couldn't show us much when we did go out each time--we'd see maybe 2-3 units every weekend that we went looking. So $4000 is a pretty high hourly rate of showing us houses.