patrick.net

aliag says

I could really use some reassurance that the realtors are bastards

And many here on PNET will tell you the current RE process is broken. While many in Congress/Media/J6P are chasing Wall Street/Banks the REA are still playing the bubble game. In their minds it a V Shape recovery. Good times ahead.

I may be a moron, but I want to make sure I'm the right kind of moron: am I being moronic for low-balling by 200k and thinking that the realtor might ever respond, or am I a moron for thinking about entering the housing market this early in the not-recovery? (Or both! Two for the price of one!)

(My friends think I'm a moron for not buying as soon as we could for as much as we could... I'm getting used to this whole moron thing...)

The specific house is: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2024-43rd-St-Long-Island-City-NY-11105/31944164_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-list-address} (though the address is slightly incorrect: it's 42nd street and it is actually 100 years old... since the seller is 90 years old, now moving in with her kids, and moved into the house when she was two.) I have chatted up the neighbors a bit...

What the listing doesn't tell you:

The house is frame, not brick. Minus $50-80k in value right there off the brick comps.

The upstairs kitchen is ripped out, walls would have to be put in downstairs to give the people there privacy/safety if it was a two family, it is half a block a from a huge Con Ed power plant, and a fifteen minute walk to the bus... which would then be a ten minute ride to the train that would take you to Manhattan. (So: yes, you could rent it-- to locals and people with low paying jobs. But it will not capture the interest of renters fleeing Manhattan or Brooklyn, so you wouldn't get well-heeled/stupid tenants no matter how much granite counter top you put in. Luckily for them, we don't want to rent it. Like the 90 year old owner, we want to use it as a single family home for the next 40 to 80 years...) That said, for rent calculation-- if you rented out the whole house as it is-- taking out the asbestos but not putting in a second kitchen, for instance-- it would probably rent for between 2500 and 3000. If you did it up with stainless steel and made it a true two family, you could get *at most* 4k/month from the two tenants. But that would also require a significant financial outlay that we just don't have-- nor do we have the grey market connections to get it done cheaply.

Oh yes, the asbestos-- There is asbestos around the basement pipes and tile on the walls. No one knows how much that would cost to remove without getting qualified engineers in there with measuring tape.

The brief conversations I had with the listing agent indicated that this, as all things, would be part of "negotiations"... She said (twice) that the bank would not give us a loan with asbestos in the basement at the time of sale... So I submitted an offer (in the manner that she requested) in the spirit of negotiating.

...Since we placed our offer, friends are now suggesting we are morons/too nice for not having our own buyer's agent. Since the buyers agents I have tried to work with stopped returning my messages, I can only assume they are so busy with other, less difficult clients, they have no interest in my money. I am being forced by them to DIY... Not that I mind... I've just been struggling (a lot) with the cognitive dissonance of being the one with the money, but not being the customer. (as in, The customer is always right...)

...We do have a lawyer and a mortgage broker, both of whom have answered my questions promptly and professionally, and I am confident in their skills. (Just in case there was some concern that I was a total naif.)

We are a young family and I am hungry for a garden of my own... but not so much that I am willing to pay what the house *might be* worth after $150k of work is done on it....

...so, those are my details. Hope they are at least entertaining, if not instructive...

That is hella expensive. I would advice to not venture outside your comfort zone of what you are willing to spend. Brokers usually are hubris driven types, make money off others debt. You work hard for your money, no sense of giving it all up to some debt driven industry that just wants to take your money and care not for consequences later.

It is very saddening to see people shackle themselves to 30 year loans and give up 10 to 15 years of their life to the bank when they fall onto hardship due to circumstances they simply did not see coming to start over paying for a painted wooden box with a door and a window.

Rule of thumb is, if it costs more than single income can support comfortably don't go into it.

Hope this helps dear.

Aliag, You are doing the right thing, by doing your math. If it doesn't add up it doesn't add up.
If it can sell at the price they are asking it will, and If they can't find someone with the ability and willingness to pay that money it won't sell.
I know you want it, but never fall in love with any property. There is always another one.

I wrote a really long comment and then decided to wait to submit... This evening I got back to the computer and the realtor had finally (after 4! weeks!) written back. Ranting on Patrick may be my lucky charm...

thomas.wong1986 says

Nomograph says

There's no such thing as an "offer email". An offer is a legal contract, signed by you as the potential buyer, which may then be signed by the seller.

An offer and a contract are two different 'events'. While the 'Final' legal expression of the transation (Contract) per Common Law are required to be written, offers/counter offers/advertising/expressing of interest can be verbal or written... email, phone, face to face, etc etc.

Um, you should consider changing your name to Thomas WRONG. Clearly you have never made an offer on a house and have no idea how the process works.

So what happened next?

American in Japan says

So what happened next?

....Since you asked... ;)... After assuring us that the property was undamaged in Irene (we used that as an excuse to remind her we exist early last week) she wrote, "Also, please contact me if you are interested in discussing a higher offer."

Which my inexperienced eye reads as, "Your offer sucks... But we haven't had a better one. Try again, you big meanie."

I am currently crafting a carefully worded reply that boils down to, "Why should I? (No, really, give me evidence to bolster your claim that I should value your house at a higher level, and I might just do that...)"

I am fully aware that I risk "losing" this property. But other properties will have a different mix of positives and negatives, and the longer we wait the more we save up for unexpected boiler explosions and roof collapses.

Whee! Not fun!

Thanks for your advice and support... I expect this to be a long and carefully drawn out experience.

aliag says

I risk "losing" this property.

That is hilarious. You're not losing anything you did not already have.

Taking your word about what you said about the house in detail, I would never pay that much for it. 699 plus the amount of work needed to go into it to make it an actual true 2 family house would be a ridiculous amount of money to spend. This sounds like a case of probably both the seller and the realtor being morons. Old people are usually unwilling to change and adapt to certain realities (their house not being worth as much as they thought). The realtor seems to be incredibly bad at their job, if they would entertain showing a house so overpriced, with so much work needed. Also, the asbestos abatement is SOLELY the problem of the owner, as you cannot even get a loan for a house with asbestos abatement needed. I recently bought a house that required a small amount of abatement, and my realtor told me they are forced to take care of that, you should not be negotiating that in the price of ANYTHING. That is their problem, and if they aren't willing to fix that, and be more reasonable with the price, then you should take your 500k elsewhere, simple solution. Try looking for FSBO, maybe putting an ISO ad in the paper. For my next house I hope to buy a FSBO, and pocket that brokers commission as a reduction in sale price.

Also I would like to mention that I know for a fact there are 2 family new construction homes (around 2000-2007) for anywhere from 550k to 700k in my neck of the woods in the pelham bay section of the Bronx. I am really having trouble understanding why that house would be priced at 699.

aliag says

...Since the buyers agents I have tried to work with stopped returning my messages, I can only assume they are so busy with other, less difficult clients, they have no interest in my money. I am being forced by them to DIY... Not that I mind... I've just been struggling (a lot) with the cognitive dissonance of being the one with the money, but not being the customer. (as in, The customer is always right...)

Nomograph says

It sounds like you don't know how these transactions work; you are definitely best off using a buyer's agent if you are serious about buying a house.

aliag:
you say that you're using a buyer's agent - but it sure doesn't sound like you are. If you're calling the number of the listing agent and negotiating yourself, you're not using a buyer's agent. That's a seller's agent.

Many of us here - most of us, actually - appear to believe that realtors are scum-sucking bottom dwellers who benefit from the painful process of buying/selling a house. However, if you're going for short-sales, it's a necessary evil to work with one of these awful pieces of shit.

You need to find yourself an elusive being - an honest realtor who wants to assist you in finding a house within your price range that you want to buy. I've heard that these people exist, although I've never met one. They must place your needs and wants above theirs and be willing to listen to you... think of it as finding a date where you're gonna get screwed, but you'll walk away with a house.

Kinda like marriage, except you'll be much more disillusioned in the end.

well, i live in the neighborhood, and the house is priced in line with what is available here. @PaulfromDaBronx, Astoria is much more convenient to Manhattan (or to Brooklyn or to the rest of Queens) than is Pelham. You can't really compare across neighborhoods. There are plenty of less expensive neighborhoods in Queens as well. That said, I feel your pain aliag--we have been on the sidelines because housing prices in Astoria/LIC are insane. They have come down around $100K from the peak but are still at least $200K overpriced IMO. The housing stock is old and often in poor condition but still seems to sell at a premium. I wish you luck with your house--there are some other houses on sale in the 45-48th street area that seem much nicer, albeit smaller, for the same price. you might check out some of those. i know there are some open houses today.

Sybrib says

aliag says

I risk "losing" this property.

That is hilarious. You're not losing anything you did not already have.

Well, I do try to amuse in between the whines....

PaulFromDaBX says

I am really having trouble understanding why that house would be priced at 699.

"Astoria is special... Astoria is recession-proof"... Astoria is still owned by 90 year old immigrants who will sell over their dead bodies-- or will them to their kids who live out on Long Island and will rent them out for the next 50 years. There is an honest-to-god limited supply-- and the last three years, prices have been propped up by Manhatmoms and Brooklynites who were priced out of their neighborhoods and are trying to re-create Park Slope. Prices are going down, but very slowly.

That particular house-- they are pricing it at what it would be worth after it had 100-200k worth of work done to it. (I have a friend who did that-- but she moved here from Brooklyn so didn't know that she was being taken advantage of... There's been a lot of graft and greed and exploitation of the rich in our little corner of Queens...)

elliemae says

you say that you're using a buyer's agent

Um, I guess I wasn't clear-- I am not. I *tried* to but they stopped returning my calls. So now I'm dealing directly with listing agents. I am not interested in short sales-- there aren't many of them in my neighborhood, and they seem to be even less flexible/more delusional about price. (The one short sale I went to, the 'owner' sat in the living room and glared at me. So did her dog. It was disturbing.)

The two buyer agents I tried to work with were used by friends who were happy with their services, so it's not like I picked up the phonebook and played pin the tail on the donkey... :} ...Then there was the friend of a friend who just never answered my first email. I have two more agents I have not yet bothered who might be interested in getting a check from me, but the main draw of buyer brokers around here is getting access to their office's pocket listings. The two agents I've had recommended are not local/ not full time enough to have pocket listings. Their main purpose would be to prove to the seller's agent I really am serious about offering such a low price and am not just pulling their leg/wasting their time.

It may be that they will be worth it to me. I haven't decided yet.

(Today I went to an open house. They want $779k for a legal two family with an illegal basement apartment-- they knocked down part of the garage wall while removing their junk and just left it there-- that smells of mothballs and is tiny. If they get the right slumlord, they could sell it for $739... We toyed with the idea of offering them $350k and telling the angry tenants that they can stay, if they'll let us clean their apartments first. It was just depressing... And makes me grateful for my current apartment. The linoleum might be coming off the floor and the cupboards won't stay shut and the fridge gets really loud when the compressor has to work too hard-- but at least it doesn't stink of mothballs and misery. *shudder*

rebb says

there are some other houses on sale in the 45-48th street area that seem much nicer, albeit smaller, for the same price. you might check out some of those. i know there are some open houses today.

Hiya, neighbor! ...I missed your post initially, or I would have responded to it up there. :)

The open house was on 47th street, actually-- I freaked out my husband by doing an impression of the realtor. (Ms Federer seems to excel at getting properties that are filled with angry tenants. She was handling the short sale I went to on 23rd street with the grumpy dog... I think I will avoid her other listings if possible.)

rebb says

They have come down around $100K from the peak but are still at least $200K overpriced IMO

I completely agree. I have friends trying to buy south of 31st Ave and they are at least coming within 30-40k of the final sale-to-others price, but north of the TriBorough is still selling at closer-to-bubble than we can afford prices. :/ ...But I am very heartened that the listing agent did finally get back to us.

When I can be detached from it, I consider the whole thing an interesting intellectual exercise-- at what point will people just sell, at whatever price? At what point capitulation? (Them or me-- I may cave first. We'll see.)

But I'm doing my part, shaking the realtor(s) up... Maybe the next low bid will get accepted, because at least it wasn't as low as mine. Every low comp is a good comp...

I see how the location may be more desirable to some, astoria/LIC is becoming a very hip place, and it is a little closer to manhattan.

The train will get you to lower manhattan from pelham bay in about 45 minutes, there are also express buses that will get you there in about the same time. If you are driving it is of course even quicker. The housing prices are not cheap here but they appear to be much more affordable then astoria. You will find single family houses here with a decent sized yard for around 350k, a double lot may be 100k more.

aliag...Have you thought about looking elsewhere or is your heart set on astoria?

On a side note, my father has been in real estate for 30 years or so. He is a good guy, he works hard for his clients, he is not sneaky or underhanded at all. Maybe that is the reason he is struggling right now. There are good realtors, there are also terrible ones, but it's only a fool that allows the terrible ones to subsist.

God, NYC sounds like Hell !!!
I thought southern California was bad But Queens, and Brooklyn sound like hell on earth.
Yuck, you can keep it!

Add to that the prices and the dilapidation of the properties, the high property taxes and the horrible schools, I would almost prefer to live in some of the ghettos of Los Angles.
My advice: Get the hell out of NY!

P.S. after hearing you New Yorkers posts on NY, I will never complain about life in Southern California again. The rest of the country (Detroit included) is paradise compared to what you have to endure.

We briefly looked in Montclair, NJ... but I am not interested in being that desperately bored... (the SAHMs I saw looked so miserable...)

We've lived in Astoria for seven years now, so I'm a little attached to the neighborhood. It is a real and culturally self-sufficient community (at least for now), rather than relying on Manhattan for anything (besides a steady stream of priced-out renters and buyers).

I do place a very high value on the roots I've put down here. Literally: I've been involved with the local Community Garden since it first tentatively opened to the public. Owning a house is important to me, but at this point I would rather rent here than own in another NYC neighborhood.

(I reserve the right to change my mind at any point in the future... ;)

~me

Aliag, I understand what you say when you say you "don't want to be desperately bored".

I am 44 years old, and when I was younger, I felt that way also.
I don't know how old you are or what kind of life you want, or if you have children, but I would like to give you some perspective that I didn't have and wasn't given to me...

Children change everything!

If you want children (and you should, because they are the greatest joy), once you have children all you care about is a clean, safe environment that has good schools! for some reason that doesn't equal exciting, trendy, or hip.

Do yourself a huge favour by considering the school district scores, because if you have children (even by accident) schools and safety and possibly a nice yard for the kids to play in become everything!!!

I'm going to second propitup1 here, if you do decide to have kids, yes, it changes your outlook on absolutely everything.

Areas that were fun and hip and exciting and cutting-edge and colorful are now dangerous and threatening and unsafe. It's amazing how different the world looks once you have a young child.

If you know you are not having kids, then safely ignore us.

We have two children, the older of whom is entering second grade in a public school with excellent test scores.

I think that anywhere can be dangerous and threatening. I find that isolation, with or without children, is the most dangerous thing for me, so I welcome the nosey grandmothers and porch-sitters here. Trash means life, danger means art.

We all do the best we can to find a balance between safety and stagnation...

Thats great I am glad that you have kids. To your credit you also seem educated and smart.
It seems the educated and smart people around me all have no kids, while everyone I meet who shouldn't be having kids is having 4 !
Usually from seperate mothers or fathers.

Good luck on your home purchase, I wish we had more people like you, low balling offers and trying to fight for your interests, and not playing stupid in a game where the cards are stacked against you. I am wishing you luck because I am doing the exact same thing only in Southern California and yes, just like you, with two wonderful kids.
Best regards.

aliag:

hope ya find what you're looking for. I wish you the best.

gameisrigged says

thomas.wong1986 says

Nomograph says

There's no such thing as an "offer email". An offer is a legal contract, signed by you as the potential buyer, which may then be signed by the seller.

An offer and a contract are two different 'events'. While the 'Final' legal expression of the transation (Contract) per Common Law are required to be written, offers/counter offers/advertising/expressing of interest can be verbal or written... email, phone, face to face, etc etc.

Um, you should consider changing your name to Thomas WRONG. Clearly you have never made an offer on a house and have no idea how the process works.

Contract Law! Look it up... Statute of Fraud. Yes, I have made an informal oral offer followed up with formal written contract for my own personal residence, cars and goods over $500. Everyone does it day in day out for personal and corporate business. And like many before the bubble we didnt attach a pre-approval loan from the bank showing the max we could borrow or a introduction letter to the seller begging them to accept the offer and a promise to feed their squirrel (rodents).

I dont give a rats ass what a realtors office 'process' is, Common Law is what counts in the courts.

RE is a crooked industry. We made an offer at listing price+$10k and never heard anything back. Then the house went pending, then active, then pending and then active, now listing with the same price we offered 8 months ago. something fishy must be going on.

Future Cash Buyer says

RE is a crooked industry.

Future Cash Buyer says

something fishy must be going on.

Can't be!!

hi neighbor--

sorry the open house was a bust. we didn't make it. i have pretty much given up going, seeing as the houses are so unconnected to the description and the price.

where are your kids? our daughter just entered kindergarten. made us even more committed to NYC as we want her to grow up in a multi-cultural environment and to have access to the cultural/educational offerings. we may be renters til we die, but we will never be suburbanites (and that is not a knock on the suburbs--for many people, the suburbs have a lot to offer but not for us.)

rebb: yes, exactly. the open house actually made me wonder if the little grey house was worth bidding over the top for, just because it wasn't soaked in a miasma of fear and desperation.

PS 122 and Kid Krazy, respectively. Am trying to get the older one into Growing Up Green, though, as then it wouldn't matter which school we were zoned for, the younger one could follow in his brother's footsteps. (122 is so full that they only guarantee to enroll kids who are currently zoned for the school, not siblings.) Plus, now that they've worked some of the kinks out, GUG seems like a pretty neat school.

I'm not thrilled with 122, but I don't think any other public school would thrill me either-- they all have the no Child Left Behind testing on their backs... but that's another rant, for another board. ;)

A friend's mom moved out onto Long Island (for the children! (tm)) when he was 4... and promptly had a nervous breakdown. I think that would be me... Even if we had a car, I like interesting people doing interesting things nearby. Without that, I cease to be interesting...

I was chatting with another Mom at the playground today about rents around here, and she thinks that landlords are purposefully trying to push the immigrants out. I don't know if it's a conscious choice, but rents are certainly high enough that you have to have a Manhattan-style job to live comfortably after you pay rent. :(

...I realized after the conversation that she probably lumped me in the "non-Immigrant" category, because our family is white. My husband comes from the UK, though, and I come from PA which *feels* like a different country, so I was complaining from a stance of an immigrant/I Found Astoria Before It Was Cool/Expensive...

Though I expect we were merely riding an early wave of gentrification. There were already two yoga studios by the time we arrived. *Sigh.*

I think I will take my snarky friends to the open houses; I've brought my son the last two times, so I felt constrained to be polite. I am not sure I'm interested in being polite anymore. If they're going to waste my time with such garbage, I may have to vent some of my spleen directly at them...

LOL. we should go to the open houses together.

aliag says

I think I will take my snarky friends to the open houses; I've brought my son the last two times, so I felt constrained to be polite. I am not sure I'm interested in being polite anymore.

Why not take your son and make it a teaching lesson? "Son, this is what an overpriced house looks like. When I negotiate pricing, I think about these factors and how they may affect pricing: [list]... These people are selling this house for $???, but when you and I went to see XXX 42nd street, that house was nicer than this one with more space and was listed for only $???..." etc.

To Part 1: It doesn't matter what the place is worth. If there is no chance the sellers would accept anything near your offer, then everyone's time is being wasted, including your own.

Especially if you gave them the attitude and language that you shared here, I'm not surprised they didn't call you back.

It does sound like you just called the listing agent, so you aren't actually enlisting the help of an agent who works for you.

Maybe the home is overpriced. Maybe if it was all fixed up it would be worth a lot more and the price is fair for the condition. Time will tell and maybe after a while the sellers would be willing to consider a lower offer. Point is, don't burn bridges. Be respectful and cool.

Because nobody likes to call you back, I'm guessing you haven't been respectful or cool.

To Part 2: The fact that the house was sold before you got to see it doesn't mean that you personally got screwed or ignored. It happens. The best way to make sure that doesn't happen in the future is find a agent to help you find a home that is on-the-ball. And be loyal to them by not calling the listing agents directly anymore.

Everyone wants to blame the agents when things don't work out. 9.9 times out of 10, it's the clients' inflated egos and disrespectful attitudes that are the problem.

rebb: you're on!

controlio: he is only 7 and has not yet developed all the social graces that it would require for him to not take this behavior and bring it into other situations where it would be less appropriate/more likely to get him a punch in the face.

greg: I am very good at using my inside voice and my outside voice-- in my conversations with realtors I have never used foul language, nor have I been anything but transparent.

I expect that the first realtor stopped returning my emails because I was too honest: I said I really really wasn't going to buy in the next 3 months, even if she showed me my dream house. I really really just wanted her to send me listings in my price range so that I could educate myself about the market-- because I specifically *didn't* want to waste her time and have her show me houses that I wasn't going to buy. I even told her that in 12 to 18 months, I would be ready to make offers. (This was last spring, BTW-- about 15 months ago. So I was even true and accurate there.)

regarding your other points: While I could say that it is my time to waste-- Dude, this is my first offer in a very strange market. It is all about the learning experience. I may be screwing up, but I hope I am learning something about the house-buying process along the way. And if nothing else, it's fodder for My Next Novel. (or my blog. I'm not always old skool.)

And yes, as I've said several times, I am not currently working with a buyer's agent *and I am fully aware of that fact*. The stars have not yet aligned, I'm an ignorant foul-mouthed bitch who can't keep a realtor happy, they're all too busy shining their Bentleys to answer my emails, whatever reason suits my mood/ the company. Hellifiknow.

This is a tiny, incestuous real estate market-- it's *why* I am ranting here, in relative anonymity. I don't have enough cash to vent at the realtors/sellers/uninformed buyers who control/ enable this market to stay so painfully high. (if i was an all-cash buyer, i think i would not need to vent at all, actually...)

re Part Two-- This is the second time that a property I was eyeing has only been listed after it's already gone into contract with someone else. I get that that is common practice in my town. I don't like it, but that isn't what pissed me off. It was petty, but I was pissed that I was getting an auto-love-to-talk-to-you... it was like when I get robo-called during dinner for a non-profit. I know it isn't personal, and i am inclined to think positively towards the source, but the lack of thinking about *me* as anything other than a purse to be snatched bugs me to pieces. ...and in order not to make a mortgage-limiting move, i vented here.

In fact, our current strategy is all about making the realtor see me as a real human being. (During our last chat, she chuckled and said *I* should become a real estate agent. I am still debating whether that was a good sign or her saying, 'Go to hell'... it was before we placed our offer, so it could go either way...)

...so yeah. healthy ego, inflated house prices. my attitude is rapidly degenerating to match the housing stock that is available. and really, I'm doing the best I can. We may rent forever, and if we do that will be because it appeared to be the smartest use of our money and our lives as each opportunity to do otherwise presented itself.

isn't that what we all are doing, here? trying to educate ourselves and learn from each other so that we can make better decisions?

greg, i really hope your comments were made in the spirit of educating me, and not (as it appeared to me) smugly smashing my ego down to size. because that would be disrespectful and uncool, don't you think?

aliag says

controlio: he is only 7 and has not yet developed all the social graces that it would require for him to not take this behavior and bring it into other situations where it would be less appropriate/more likely to get him a punch in the face.

Fair enough, but maybe it'd be good for a realtor or owner to hear about what a piece of crap their house is from a 7-year old. :) "Mommy/Daddy, this house is junky compared to the last one we saw. How is the price $100,000 higher?"

not to hijack this thread onto Astoria issues but I get the feeling that people commenting really don't understand just how odd and incestuous the market is here, and how much control realtors have. For example, most listings do not wind up in a MLS. Most realtors seem to do alot, if not most of their work (and make most of their money) as brokers for rentals. In that other guise, they don't want to show you more than 3 or 4 places--you are expected to pick one of the ones you are shown in the course of about an hour. Otherwise, you are not worth their time and effort (despite the fact that you will be paying 1 month's rent--typically $2000-3400). Why? Because Astoria is a popular neighborhood and there are so many potential clients that the realtor/broker can just move on to the next one who will probably be easier to bulldoze. That attitude definitely carries over into the sale market as well.

p.s. 122 is a great school, and so is GUG. If we lived in the 122 catchment we would have been way less obsessed with the G&T stuff.

God I am glad that I don't live in NYC.

propitup1 says

God I am glad that I don't live in NYC

It's not for everybody, but, then, no place is. I think the city had its last breath a few years ago. It has since gone from unaffordable to plain foolhardy to live there, given that the cute/hip/vibrant/gentrifying neighborhoods seem to be pushing further and further into The Void.

When it takes an hour subway ride to commute to your Manhattan job and you pay 2500/mo to rent what amounts to A Compromise, you become mean and lose your looks.

Future Cash Buyer says

RE is a crooked industry. We made an offer at listing price+$10k and never heard anything back. Then the house went pending, then active, then pending and then active, now listing with the same price we offered 8 months ago. something fishy must be going on.

Brokers call that lead generation. Fake listing there just to get more interested folks contacting them. Common practice.

This all just sounds like bad business. I guess since you don't know his name, you don't know where his office is located? Or is it indicated somewhere?