Realtor Buying Property I find instead of showing it to me

[Ross McKenzie]

Re: How can a buyer avoid the situation where his realtor buys the property that the prospective buyer (me) asks him to show me?  Said another way; Because most successful realtors are also property investors, what's to stop realtors using "buyers" to find deals for themselves.

I suppose that the answer is obvious: don't use a realtor for buying, but it's my first property, I I want to ensure that I don't miss a legal step that ends up costing me huge money - and I'm not so good at negotiating - and Realtors are necessary to determine fair market value.

This situation seems to have happened to me, whereby I found a good deal, then asked my Realtor to show it to me. Realtor said he'd set up a showing for 5 days later, to which I replied "not good enough!". I called another realtor to show it to me the next day, and found that that the property was sold. I suspected, (but cannot know), that "my" Realtor bought the property for himself as an investment, or alerted one of his preferred clients to the deal.

Many thanks.  Ross

[Chris Simmons]

I will be a nice guy and not assume you are as crazy as everyone else does.  As a licensed realtor, I can tell you that goes against his professional duty to you and is unethical.  Both can get him into serious trouble if proven and potentially cost his license.

That said, he wasn't your realtor.  You called him for a showing.  He said he could do it in 5 days.  You said not good enough and called another realtor.  He was no longer your agent.  Based on that alone, he was a free person to do what he chose.  Assuming he was in some way involved in this.