Buyer making entry and starting work prior to closing

[Brandon Ingegneri]

I recently locked up a single family, fire damaged house in Providence RI.  I was going to demo the house and blow out a quick rehab on it.  It's a bungalow, so it would be a fast renovation.  While the title work is being done, someone makes us an offer, so I decide to assign the contract which I have done a million times before.  Quick in and out profit leaving enough meat on the bone for the buyers, and it leaves me time to deal with projects that take a higher priority and better return on our list. 

I make it explicitly clear to the buyer's agent that they are not to hand out the lock box code or make entry without our permission and that the buyer is not to have the lock box code what so ever which is standard in RI.  Last week, I get a phone call from the seller asking if my guys are emptying out the house.  Apparently this buyer was given the code by her agent, began emptying the house, and sought no permission to do so in the process. 

When the seller showed up, the buyer lied to the seller telling her that we gave her permission to do this.  I have an executed agreement in place with this buyer to close, but given what transpired, I am furious.  Should I report the agent who is a partner with the buyer to the RIAR and DBR and blow up my deal, or should I close it and move on?   

Looking at it logically, my thought is just to close the deal, but given my level of anger and frustration with how they have conducted business thus far, I am inclined to make an example out of them.  I figured it would be a good one to throw out to the forums and am curious to read the feedback. 

[Anthony Thompson]

@Brandon Ingegneri I would just move on and make a note not to do business with them in the future.

It sounds like the explicit instructions you gave them were oral, and not something they agreed to in writing, so it sounds like it would end up as a "he said, she said" anyway.

But 99 times out of 100, trying to make an example out of someone backfires anyway. There's that old quote about wrestling with a pig - you get dirty and the pig just likes it.

Incidentally, this is why I always maintain tight control over access (key or lock box code) even when wholesaling. It's a pain to have to go out there every time the buyer wants to get in, but you avoid exactly this kind of situation.

These days, it seems like a lot of "cash buyers" are just wholesaling to someone else anyway.

Even within the last week I saw the same deal presented to me from three different sources, each with a different level of mark up. I'm still not sure who the "actual" wholesaler (who got it under contract) was. But I wanted nothing to do with it.

Good luck with this one - if it were me I'd just move on.