Being truthful can go a long way, and this story is a proof of that!

Imagine working with a real estate agent to buy a home, but the real estate agent lies to you. When it comes time to sell your current home before moving to the new home, would you hire the original real estate agent even though he lied, or would you hire someone else?

This guy shares how their real estate agent lied to them about an open house and how they got back at him.

Check out the full story!

Lie to me – bye bye $20000+ commission

A while back my wife and I decided to downsize and so we were out there dealing with those bastions of honesty, real estate agents, on a weekly basis.

We attended an open home for an apartment that we fell in love with, and after another arranged viewing, we made an offer with the agent Paul.

They wanted that house!

Now Paul was your stereotypical agent, sharply dressed, talkative and smarmy with an attractive assistant to hand out the brochures. But he had the listing for what we wanted so there was no avoiding him.

Our initial under listing price offer was refused with a counter offer which we thought was over the odds. But we wanted it badly and as we were downsizing the extra $20000 or so was not a strain.

They did what was needed!

We agreed to the price on the strict proviso that the impending open house for the weekend did not proceed as we didn’t want to run the risk of someone throwing in a higher offer.

Contracts were to be exchanged on the Monday.

This was agreed to by Paul.

I drove past at the time of the open house, just to check out the neighborhood again and saw signs out.

The lying jerk!

UH OH…

So being petty we went up to the apartment, said hello to Paul and Jackie who were a little surprised to see us, and then proceeded to follow around any visitors and point out the deficiencies as we saw them.

We also monopolized Paul and Jackie’s anytime people were angling to chat to them. They couldn’t fob us off, we were buyers.

We were the first in and the last out. 10 groups left knowing every fault in the apartment, the area and with the complex.

They did not see that coming!

I was mad but kept it amicable because this was exactly what we wanted and I didn’t want to jeopardize the purchase.

Through gritted teeth we liaised with Paul and exchanged contracts on the Monday as planned.

But the best part was to come.

As down-sizers we had a house to sell, almost double in price to the unit we just purchased.

This is where it gets interesting…

The property we bought was tenanted so we had six months until we could get vacant possession which suited us as we could get our old home ready for sale.

Of course, Paul was keen to get our listing and was on to it straight away.

I didn’t discourage him and actually got him around to look at our old home to recommend improvements we should do before listing the property for sale.

He was only too happy and came up with a detailed plan for us and came and presented to us in a professionally done package. He followed up every month asking for updates.

He wanted to close the deal!

It took us 5 months of work to get it ready to list.

We phoned Paul to come out and have a look at the property ready for sale.

He turned up and was blown away by the improvements and you could almost see him salivating to have this listing.

He arrived with comparable sales and a price in mind and did pressure me to sign listing documents then and there.

He knew what he had to do!

But I made the excuse that my wife was away for the next couple of days (she wasn’t) and there was no way I could agree to a listing price and sign documents without her.

We made an appointment for later in the week.

And that was the last we saw of Paul in person.

Our listing with another agent went live on the property websites two days later, and the first person I forwarded the advertisement to was Paul.

And the cherry on top!

I simply said that this was a direct result of lying to us about cancelling the open house and that we couldn’t reward someone who did that to us.

We got an offer that we couldn’t refuse on the very first open house.

The new agent pocketed just over $20000 in commission. Probably loose change too agents but it wasn’t Paul’s loose change at least.

YIKES! That sounds so evil!

Why would Paul lie about the open house in the first place?

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This real estate agent had a good laugh at this story!

This user knows this couple pulled off a great move.

This user knows that Paul shouldn’t have lied about the open house.

This user wants to know how real estate agents make so much in commission.

This user appreciates this couple for putting Paul in his place.

Lying won’t get you very far.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.