You have a most kind spirit. Perhaps I am being overly cynical but the listing agent not only brought you an offer before it was listed on the TV website he also suggested a sell price that was at least $20k under the market value. Either he is not a very good agent or he was being unscrupulous.

Amen.
It may or may not have been unethical, but anyone allowing a home to be sold this way in today’s market is getting cheated out of the true market value. And no doubt the sales agent knew exactly what he/she was doing.

Why did she accept the offer ?

Being an unadvertised sale makes the transaction unusable for appraisal purposes because it was not publicly offered for sale.

Did the TV agent give your daughter comps, so she sould verify the reason for the listing price? Did they list it under list price? If your daughter got comps to compare, I see now problem here as TV's real estate arm is a closed system.

The daughter has a father who was for some time a real estate agent. That to me means she was not unaware and had general knowledge about this and information as near as a phone call to her dad who lives here.

Setting the price for a home is an agreement. You cannot blame an agent, when a price is too high or not high enough. It has to be agreed on.

You have to ACCEPT an offer.

You CHOOSE who lists it for you.

My husband and I have been full time in our motorhome for 8 years and are seriously considering settling down in TV. This explains why homes, especially the Courtyard Villas, are listed the first day as 'pending' on the website. To make matters more confusing these pending homes are then listed as an 'open house'.

Thank you for posting this as it cleared up a few questions I had.

That doesn’t change the fact that not listing the sale publicly kept the seller from getting true market value. The seller made a mistake allowing it happen and the sales agent acted in their best interest, not the sellers.

"Pending" means the sale has not closed. Many things can happen between accepting an offer (pending) and closing...

Hence, they continue to show the home to take back-up offers in case the first offer falls thru. Common practice...

Let me see if I can make my question clearer. I did not think my daughter was cheated and my daughter did not think she was cheated. She got a very good price for both of her villas and the sales were quick and clean. My question was, and is, is it ethical to withhold these listings from the general public for a week or so while they are circulated “in house”? I feel that it is at the very least, borderline ethical. I get the concept that some people have alerted their agent to let them know when a certain style of home becomes available in a certain area, and they have every right to be notified when that listing hits the books, but I think a week or more to withhold it from the public is a disservice to potential buyers who aren’t so connected. It also could potentially favor investors over would be residents. My problem is an access issue rather than a money issue. Ed

I get it. Instead of answering your concern others are changing your concern. The person was dead wrong for handling the way they did without permission. WRONG! :ohdear:

Perhaps I do not clearly understand. This appears to have happened because right now there is a scorching hot house market. It seems to me to be that the time it takes to get a drone out to photograph, tweak the property for best presentation and get the listing aired was not altered. What was different was people poised to leap to buy it. And they did.

I don't see how anyone got richer here or did anything unethical.

I have watched local neighbors say they were selling their home recently, watched the drone take pictures. Watched the sellers do some of the things suggested by the listing agents to present the property to it's best advantage and that usually takes several days. (removing furniture, having bushes trimmed etc.)

What is different is that in my life I have never seen such a hot housing market and see things sell so fast and at greatly higher prices than a year ago. EVERYWHERE.

Yaya11
 

agree...not bound by a code of ethics...who is the agent working for...?what was the true value...what is the value of a listing service to disseminate to the public,but instead not disseminate it to the public...in the case of many REALTORS practicing under the guidelines of a Code of Ethics...this wold be considered a pocket listing,which is prohibited and taken quite seriously...

ethics, always in the eye of the beholder. . . Seller's regret maybe a better description? difference between a contract price and a "public market" price which may or may not be different, but can and never be proven? Possibility the result of a retired person who has a lot more time to think about what has happened? Possibility the result of too much experience in the field and didn't believe the stories about the villages sales team? Possibly feeling bad when good things happen?

5 Mindsets That Make It Impossible to Be Happy (Even When Good Things Happen) | Inc.com


seller's regret over a perceived potential process difference in a hot market, yet the seller did it twice. . . and many here are happy that they got their house in the exact same way. . . so now the seller knows how the villages resales operates, and this has been discussed here many times, the OP reads and posts here, and so it goes. . .

people are individuals, but we all have human foibles

OP,
I agree with your observation. Additionally, I believe the Developer/TV Real-estate prefers the pocket listings to their insider team as it also minimizes comparable listings on their website to thus continue the mindset for potential buyers that they, potential buyers, need to snap up the new homes as soon as they are released. Multiple folks going after all of the releases. TV want to continue to drive that train. Thanks for sharing, I am sure many other folks who sold pre owned via TV have asked the same question.