Thankyou Aaron and Michael, your answers helped clear somethings up.
TBird

Hi Tbird,
Unfortunately when we are dealing with banks, they do not always play by the rules and "they don't care". Typically counters must be signed and then the time frame begins at confirmation of fully executed contracts, including signatures. Again, unfortunately the banks many times will give a verbal and they start the times then. You can fight if you want, but they will win. The listing agent should have been aware of the auction date.

Dear Tbird,

This is a difficult situation and I am sorry that you are dealing with it. I will do my best to shed some light on your questions, but please understand that I can only answer with the limited information you have included in this post.

I am an REO agent for a few major banks. The answer to your first question is depends 100% on that Bank Addendum that was sent out to you. Every addendum is different depending on the bank, and timeframes are a common place where they tend to differ. I would never advise a client to perform their professional physical inspection prior to having a fully executed purchase agreement and addendum from the seller in hand. If your inspection period was reduced to 5 days from when the addendum is provided to you by the seller, without the seller having signed that addendum, there is no contract. Those timeframes should not be able to start until there is a bilateral agreement between both parities. There is no way of knowing for sure that the seller is going to hold you to that timeframe if they have not signed the document that is advising you of those timeframes.

Question 2: The answer is Yes as long as they did in fact know that the property was certainly going to auction. This is a sticky situation. There is a very good chance that the Listing agent did not know that the property was going to auction. I would like to believe that they did, but there is always a chance that the Asset Mgr failed to include that information in the listing agents marketing strategy. As a rule of thumb for any real estate matters regarding disclosure, the answer is “if you know it, you disclose it.” IMO this is a disclosure dispute and you should be able to work something out with your selling agent at the close of escrow on your next purchase. (if you stick with them)

In conclusion, please try to keep in mind that anytime you are purchasing a bank owned property, or any distress situation property, there is always a very good chance that little things getting overlooked will cost you money. Though I do not feel like this is a “little thing” by any means, I am not surprised to hear that it happened to you. A great Buyer’s Agent will work diligently to avoid these situations and when they come up, they will have a plan in place to make sure that you are fully satisfied with the results by the time you close escrow on your purchase.

I hope this helped in some way,

Aaron