[quote author="IrvineRenter" date=1247732421][quote author="xoneinax" date=1247718376]Short sale shenanigans ? Submit an offer for 250k and see what happens; today, it is worth that price. 3 years from now, hard to say.</blockquote>
Just so you guys understand how the listing agents are gaming the system....
A listing agent will put a property on the market for 20% or more below comps to attract attention. The property will get 20 bids or more, and the listing agent will pick through the offers to find the bidders who are not represented by another agent. Then the listing agent will approach these couple of bidders and offers to work with them as their buyer's broker so they can "double end" the transaction and make 6% instead of 3%.</blockquote>
I respectfully disagree.
In looking at the data for closings so far in 2009 in Irvine, Tustin, Orange, and Santa Ana, there are 568 reported closed short sales.
Of those, 94 had the same listing agent and buyer's agent (a double-ended deal) which runs at about a 16% clip.
Upon further inspection, only one agent double-ended more than once.
He may be your lone gunman.
Looking at non-short sale transactions over the same period in the same cities, there were 2848 closed transactions.
Of these transactions, there were 301 incidents of the agent representing both buyer and seller, or about 11%.
There were 58 agents that did this multiple times. One agent managed to do it 5 times.
From personal experience, I've witnessed that the banks have a protection clause for just this scenario in their boilerplate. Loss mitigation groups typically cap their rate at 5% total commissions to be paid, and cut the rate to 3% if agent represents both parties. There is no incentive for the agent to "cherrypick" and represent both parties since he or she would essentially be doing the work of two agents for single pay.
I believe sugarspun previously professed to be a working primarily in short sales, and may have more light to shed on this.
I'd be interested to here his/her take.
-IR2