Woman Paid Too Much for House and is Suing Agent

A home buyer is suing her real estate agent because she overpaid for a house.

“We hired our agent because he was a real estate professional,” Marty Ummel told TODAY’s Ann Curry on Friday in New York. “He was expected to do his due diligence. And they have a code of ethics where they have to put the buyers first. I think he just wanted to go ahead and make his commission.”

Unfortunately for Mrs. Ummel, that’s no good excuse. When you buy a house you sign a lot of contracts and it’s not really a good idea to neglect to read those contracts. It’s also a really bad idea to not do your own research when making such a huge purchase. They bought this house for $1.2 million- that’s a lot of money to just trust to your real estate agent. There’s a reason for the warning “Buyer Beware”.

MSNBC legal analyst Susan Filan told Curry that she doesn’t think the Ummels will prevail in court.

“I don’t think it’s a suit that has merit,” she said. “I think the standard of proof will be that this agent willfully, deliberately and with malicious intent withheld this information. This information that was allegedly withheld is public information. The bank wouldn’t have given them the mortgage in the amount they got if the appraisal didn’t back the house.”

The bank won’t approve a loan of more than the house is worth. But the Ummels feel that they were duped even in the appraisal process. Ummel says the agent didn’t give her a written copy of the appraisal until after the deal had gone through, even though she’d repeatedly requested it.

Why did she sign the contracts before she had all of the information she wanted? If she was curious about the appraisal to the extent that she repeatedly asked for a copy then she was obviously aware of the house buying process. She knew what she needed for research. That tells me that she wanted the house so badly that she didn’t care enough to do her research prior to buying the house. That’s her fault.

She goes on to say that other houses in the area of the same size as hers or bigger were sold for less. I can say the same about my own area. Did she look at the interior of these houses? Was she sitting in on the deal process, where agent and seller decide what the final price will be? My house was on the market for a full $25,000 than what we paid for it. The seller accepted our offer. That’s how it works. If the Ummels wanted to buy the house for less, they should have insisted on more negotiation. If their agent wasn’t working with them then they should have fired him and found one that would work with them. That’s their right and their responsibility. Caveat emptor.

“The value of something is what someone’s willing to sell it for and what someone’s willing to pay for it,” Filan said. “Some of those houses may have gone for less than yours because the seller was so motivated, they didn’t want the same amount that your seller did. Maybe they were going through a divorce and wanted to give their spouse less.”

Exactly. Did Mrs. Ummel talk to the seller’s to see what their motivation was? Would they have accepted less than the price for which the house was sold? Would she have sued them if the answer was “no”.

Mrs. Ummel says:

“There are other attorneys and Realtors who say we have a good case, we’re trailblazers,” she said. “And I think when all the facts come out, that we have a very good chance of winning, and if not, we want to change the industry. We want disclosure.”

The fact is there is full disclosure. It’s all there in the documents. It’s a matter of not putting complete trust in anyone and making sure that your own best interests are looked after- before signing the final papers. Mrs. Ummel sounds like she’s suffering from a huge case of buyer’s remorse, understandable if she agreed to the purchase price and then found out the house down the street could have been purchased for less. But she’s not putting much thought into this lawsuit and may just be wasting her money.

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