WARNING! AVOID UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. Do not go anywhere near Cook Real Estate of North Bend or their agent Brian Davis.
Being Australian making our first purchase in USA, we put our trust in agent Brian Davis appointing him our buyer's agent despite him not even showing us houses for many months or the one we purchased. What fools we were for being loyal! Getting information right from the beginning was like pulling teeth. We were kept in the dark on many levels such as not being told up front what we could have included in our purchasing contract. We got advised to pay full price and got pressured into a panic mode deadline to enter the offer. While there was a claim of another offer, it seemed mighty strange that the sellers didn't take it since it was way better than ours!! Full price, three months rentback opportunity and no inspection! We were not offering that much rentback and we wanted an inspection. Things did not make any sense at all - such as the owners didn't want to do a bidding war because they liked us best!! Bizarre!
Mr Davis also rail-roaded us into having a BEST MATE do the house inspection without first giving us the full heads up about what the process involved, allowing us to investigate other inspectors or even allowing us time to compare costs. On discovery of many problems with a relatively young house, we were also heavily pressured to reduce the dollar amount of the repair costs we wanted to claim from the sellers. Conflict arose as Mr Davis sought to pressure us to reduce the repair dollar amount for the sellers to the point it seemed he was working for them! He even stated he could get the work done cheaper for us through his connections, hence implying we didn't need to claim as much! What was even more frustrating was that we had to resort to writing our own house repairs requests to the sellers for entry on the contract due to Mr Davis not following instructions. Every part of the process was becoming difficult! Disturbingly, he also kept sending through automated contracts for immediate signing which presented our financial repair requests INCORRECTLY. Luckily we picked up on it and refused to sign each time.
Then, in the ultimate surprise, it turned out the payment we sought for those house repairs we wanted did not come from the sellers at all! Instead it came from Mr Davis' commission! It was called a "gift" from him to us that apparently we were meant to be thankful for! Worse, his "gift" was put in a legal contract to which Mr Davis was not a signatory! We found out afterwards normal practice is to deduct the money needed to rectify inspection house problems from the contracted purchase price - a clean way to do it legally with all signatories on the document being proper, that is the buyers and sellers. A so-called buyer's agent gifting part of a commission to get a sale through to guarantee the full commission cut does not sit right when the buyer was pressured by that agent to reduce that very amount.
We feel we were taken advantage of being Australian and not kept properly informed about the process in general and the steps we could take to keep us protected about a range of things. It was not to our advantage to have Mr Davis represent us.
Even the broker, David Cook, failed to step up and properly answer our pertinent questions or give the feedback we had been waiting weeks for, despite knowing full well we were upset with the agent to the point we requested he be removed. Alarmingly, Brian Davis and Cook Real Estate give little regard to buyers - their sole target is getting your money and maximising their commission $$$ no matter what.
Be smart and steer clear of them. read more