Imagine having a friend who is a realtor, and you decide to have them help you look for a home to buy. If you found a home on your own, would you still involve your realtor in the sale, or would you handle it yourself?

In this story, one family is in this situation. They tried to involve their realtor friend, but it worked out in a way where they didn’t need a realtor. Now, the wife is wondering if they should’ve handled it differently.

Let’s read all the details.

AITA for not including a realtor (also family friend) on the purchase of our new construction home?

So we have a family friend who recently started selling real estate.

We’ve been considering purchasing a new home for the last year or so, and our friend signed us up for his MLS emails.

We did have him show us 2 houses over the course of the last year.

Their family is growing, and they need more room.

I recently found out I’m pregnant with baby #3 and we’ve been trying to figure out if we should do an addition to our current home or purchase a larger home.

I called countless contractors and no one had availability to take on the project until end of 2021 or early 2022. So I started perusing realtor.com daily.

Last week a really cool old house popped on realtor.com. We asked our realtor friend if we could see it and he arranged a showing.

Unfortunately the pictures hid the defects and it would be a HUGE project.

But they quickly found another home they’re interested in.

While me and my husband were driving home from the showing, we noticed a neighborhood with new construction. We pulled up the area on realtor.com and found that one of the partially completed homes was for sale!

We fell in love with the layout, the lot, and the neighborhood!

I emailed the builder and asked for more info.

They immediately emailed back and set up an appt for next day.

They kept their realtor friend in the loop.

Later on our realtor friend texted to see what we thought of the home from earlier.

We told him that was way more of a project than we wanted, but sent him the new construction home and told him I reached out to the builder for more info.

The next day we met with the builder. We talked finishes, warranties, and price. We decided to proceed with a purchase agreement.

Our next call was to our realtor friend to have him list our house.

But their friend is pretty upset.

So our friend came over with the owner/broker of his company and we signed a contract to list our home.

Come to find out, our friend can only help with purchases and not listings. He will get a small commission since he brought us to the broker/owner, but he cannot be the listing agent.

Now he’s pushing to be part of our purchase with the builder, but the purchase agreement is already in place between us and the builder. We didn’t need a realtor for the purchase – there were no showings, negotiations, inspections, etc.

He’s really mad that we didn’t include him on the purchase even though we tried to give him our listing. He says because he was working with us (he showed us 3 houses over the course of a year) that we should have included him. AITA?

They tried to include their realtor friend, but it worked out in an unexpected way where they didn’t actually need a realtor. I don’t think they did anything wrong. Let’s see what Reddit thinks about this story.

This person doesn’t think they did anything wrong.

This is a good question.

Another person makes a pretty good point.

Everyone seems to agree that they didn’t do anything wrong.

But there would only be one scenario where they would be obligated to help him.

Finding the right home is more important than humoring your realtor friend.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.