Possible Wholesale done illegally?

[Todd Collins]

Made an offer on a house on April 26th, 2023. The sellers countered through a text message from their listing agent which read "My clients want to counter at 365. Heck I am shocked if I had known I would have bought it. I accepted their offer. I signed the contract and sent it back to the listing agent by my agent. He then began giving excuses as to why the sellers were not signing. First it was they did not know how to do electronic signatures. Then they were too tired. That evening a showing was scheduled even with the sellers being tired. The next day a 400 thousand dollar offer appeared. The owners were going with the higher offer. That evening the house was listed as being under contract with a realtor. The next day it disappeared from MLS, and the reappeared a few hours later under the original listing agents father's name who is also a realtor. He then bought the house and closed on May 10th for the exact same price I was paying and sold it on May 12th for 65 thousand dollars profit. Is this legal? I am sure it is unethical because the local real estate commission has scheduled a hearing. I was not made aware of any of his interest in buying the property. I feel like because the owners countered my original offer, I accepted that offer, signed the contract and sent it to the listing agent. We had a binding contract. Thoughts, advice, attorney referral.

[Chris Seveney]

Quote from @Todd Collins:

Made an offer on a house on April 26th, 2023. The sellers countered through a text message from their listing agent which read "My clients want to counter at 365. Heck I am shocked if I had known I would have bought it. I accepted their offer. I signed the contract and sent it back to the listing agent by my agent. He then began giving excuses as to why the sellers were not signing. First it was they did not know how to do electronic signatures. Then they were too tired. That evening a showing was scheduled even with the sellers being tired. The next day a 400 thousand dollar offer appeared. The owners were going with the higher offer. That evening the house was listed as being under contract with a realtor. The next day it disappeared from MLS, and the reappeared a few hours later under the original listing agents father's name who is also a realtor. He then bought the house and closed on May 10th for the exact same price I was paying and sold it on May 12th for 65 thousand dollars profit. Is this legal? I am sure it is unethical because the local real estate commission has scheduled a hearing. I was not made aware of any of his interest in buying the property. I feel like because the owners countered my original offer, I accepted that offer, signed the contract and sent it to the listing agent. We had a binding contract. Thoughts, advice, attorney referral.

 Did they sign your offer? If not then you do not have any binding contract. I can say yes we will accept it but a verbal is not binding unfortunately. At this point in time its also too late to do anything but just a lesson learned.