A few years ago, my buyer was upset when his offer was turned down.  He called the Seller directly to ask why it was not countered.  Seller had never seen it!  The Listing Agent had shown his own offer to get both sides of the commission. 

    It's not just unethical.  That Seller filed a civil suit against the Brokerage, and reported the LA and the Broker to the Florida Real Estate Commission.

Praful Thakkar, just a couple of months ago, my buyer's offer was rejected, it was over asking, cash, no contingencies. It closed less than list price with financing and listing agent was also the buyer's agent. My buyer found and contacted the seller directly, his offer was never presented. There's really no way to find out till it's too late unless we  contact the seller directly.

In the early days of buyer agency (the 90's) a buyer agent offer NEVER got presented, so we always presented our own contract to the seller ( LA present).

What we would do is call the seller or leave a note on their door that we have submitted an offer to their agent.

The BA can call the seller direct to see if they received the offer. In fact if you are a true buyers agent it is your job to make sure that the offer is presented. What you cannot do is try to negotiate directly with the seller.

Calling the agents broker is a joke...like what, they will not lie to cover up getting both ends of the deal?

Eve

Realistically, there is no way to know.  It's often difficult to impossible to contact the seller directly and if the agent never acknowledged receipt of your offer, they could claim it was never received and got lost in the spam folder.  Plus, while you are allowed out here to present your offer directly to the seller, doing an end-run around the agent to contact the seller directly is not ok.

Yes you can ask for the presentation/rejection sections to be initialed, but those can be forged.  I've seen an agent forge every signature and intial for a seller's ex-wife once.

I have told this story before:

Agent receives two offers. Agent does not present one of the offers. Buyer of the offer that was not presented calls office, and in agent's absence, another agent tells buyer that their offer was accepted. Buyer believes their offer is accepted. Buyer then finds out that offer was not accepted. Buyer files complaint against agent and it comes out that the offer was never presented. Agent loses license for one year.

I realize that despite that cautionary tale, agents still try to and get away with it.To answer your question, the best thing to do is to apply pressure to the broker. If the broker is the problem, demand proof of submittal. If they refuse, file a complaint, hold their feet to the fire and get them to show it was submitted or own up to the fact that it wasn't.

A huge PITA. Our contracts have a place where the seller signs that they rejected the offer. I can't recall in recent memory receiving one.

Very hard to prove. You could ask for the listing agent to have her sellers initial the first page of the offer confirming receipt when you submit the listing, although I don't know that you could make then sign.

Not easy. Just have to rely on trust. There is no requirement for the listing agent to verify that they presented an offer, but many agents, as a professional courtesy will ask the sellers to intitial and date first page of an offer and send it back to the buyers agents as verification that sellers saw the offer.

Very hard to do since you cannot approach the seller, but Fred has a solution.

I'd just ask the Listing Agent. If you do anymore then you're treading in the the Seller's Agent's territory. If you really feel like the offer is not being presented then you do have the right to ask to present the offer IN PERSON... but rest assured, that request is seldom welcomed warmly by sellers or agent.  

I think Fred Griffin has the answer to this one, Praful Thakkar ....I'd follow that guidance....

Unless you present your offer in person, there is no way to know for sure that an offer was presented to the seller. We hope that we work with honorable people, but we also know not everyone is trustworthy. Money sometimes makes people do bad things.

I have heard of buyers contacting sellers directly when there is a suspicion that an offer was not presented by it is probably too late by the time that occurs.

In the California purchase agreement, there's a spot to specify when the offer was presented and another for the seller to sign if the offer was rejected. Unfortunately, most listing agents fail to return that page, even (or especially) when pressed.

The buyer can send their offer directly to the seller if the agent fails to respond, but at that point, it's probably too late.

Lots of "trust". There is a line in our state purchase agreement to confirm presentation. A broker- to- broker call is rarely needed I have found.

In PA we have a form the seller signs if you want to present it. Never had anyone in our area use it, but it is there.

All offers are supposed to be presented to the Seller in a "timely fashion" and the seller is supposed to either accept, reject or counter your offer with date, time and initials.  If I never receive anything from the listing agent I have no way of knowing if my offer was really ever presented.

You hope the offer will be presented and that you will receive a call. However, there is no shortage of unethical agents.

I call and ask! I have even asked to present my own offer, in the presence of the listing agent, to make sure it was presented properly. Surprisingly, I got permission to do that and we got the deal. The listing agent had her own offer on the table, but the buyers chose mine.

Praful,

No control, but eventually people find out.  A

If there is one Praful Thakkar I do not know of a way to make a listing agent comply with a request to "prove it".  If there is a way to connect with the seller directly, that may work. 

Not really much you can do! The owner has no obligation to respond, so the best you get is to ask the listing agent!

No not really.

There's no way of finding out with 100% accuracy.  You can call the listing agent to follow up.

Right here on Active Rain is a vendor who offers an OPEN CONCEPT transaction management/CRM system that DOES present ALL offers directly to the seller and the sellers agent. 

Transparency IS available.

Are you willing to pay for it?

What is the other-side of unfiltered offers getting to the seller who has hired you to represent him/her?

an agent is bound by their fiduciary thus their word means something

In CO it is mandatory for every offer, written or verbal to be presented, but our commission says there is no way to find out if they actually did.  

Other than asking the sellers I don't know of any way.

No.

I understand in AZ you can present the offer personally to the seller with the seller's agent present.  I have never heard of anyone doing this, but understand it used to be done with much greater frequency than it is today.  

There is no way to prove that, unless the seller signed last page of offer ( optional).

With new technology, there is absolutely a way for the seller and the buyer to know if offer was presented.We wrote an algorithm that solves this issue.

Praful Thakkar Ask for the first page of the contract with "REJECTED" written on it and signed by the seller.

You can ask...

I think the only real way to find out would be to contact the seller.

So much of this is based on trust. I do not ask for proof but mostly know when I see seller's signature on a counteroffer, rejection or acceptance.

On our contract you can ask the seller to sign when it was presented. Date & time field.