Dealing with questionable ethics among real estate agents

[Danny Taylor]

Hey guys!  We have a question that we are having a hard time coming to terms with.  The problem is that we live and invest in a small rural community.  Every time we have offered on a house we hear that the seller magically has multiple offers.  Our first rental property was on the market for two years as a bank foreclosure.  It had gone to auction multiple times and had never sold.  A local realtor then listed it for the bank and did a price reduction. It sat on the market for another two weeks before we placed an offer for the complete asking price.  Later that day we were informed that there were multiple offers and that we needed to give them our best and highest offer.  So we offered more.  We also questioned the ethics behind the sudden multiple offers and eventually won that round.  We have since offered on 5 or 6 other properties that are priced right, only to get the same story.  Suddenly multiple people are interested in the exact same property that has sat for months on the market.  

So we just put another offer on a house last Thursday.  The seller countered but was still a little high so we countered her counter.  We learned on Saturday that the seller did not know where she was going to live after the sale so we told our realtor to let her know we would just let her rent the place until she found other accommodations.  Sounds like everything is going to work in our favor right?  No.  The listing agent asked for an extension of the offer until 5pm on Monday.  We agreed and found out this afternoon that we had lost the offer.  Because this is a small town we pushed for more information and found that the listing agent had brought another buyer to the table that was willing to pay the listing price.  We suspect that this buyer will be another investor in the area that works with the listing agent.  The questions that we have are: Is this unethical behavior that should be addressed?  Is this just small town "politics" at play?  How do we win in this climate? 

Any expertise is welcome!  We're tired of losing out to these guys.  Our goal is to have 5 rentals purchased, turned and rented by the end of the year...