This ended up to be a case where the listing agent didn't submit our contract to Fannie Mae because her husband (who is also a realtor) had an interested client. We submitted our contract first and the agent held it and submitted her husbands contract, which was accepted. Fannie Mae confirmed that they did not receive our contract so I have no doubt that this is true. More specifically, we submitted a contract on Saturday and didn't hear back about the denial until the next Wednesday. She held our contract until she was able to submit her husbands contract and it was accepted before giving us the denial. Also, we later found out that the offers were identical so it wasn't a matter of one contract being "better" than the other. We ended up getting the house after the first contract fell through and the title company verified that her husband was the realtor representing the first client. It boils down to greed and wanting full commission. It is unfortunate that this type of fraud happens but it does. I didn't report the realtor at my wife's request to "forgive" but many realtor friends have advised that I should. Water under the bridge...lesson learned....at least we got the house.

Bid? Offer? Did you and your agent fill out a formal contract document? Did your agent provide the listing agent with that document in a timely fashion, along with whatever other documents were specified in the listing? Did your agent have an earnest money check from you? Was your offer a clean offer, not contingent upon the sale of another property and one that did not predicate some sort of repairs? In other words, was there something about your offer that would have disqualified you as a buyer of that particular property? If the house, for instance, would not possibly pass FHA standards and you made an offer with FHA financing, your offer may have been set aside in favor of one with a conventional loan.

I am a Fannie Mae listing agent, and I find that would-be buyers who do not get the properties they seek often accuse the REO listing agent of not submitting their offer. It happens so often, in fact, that I now routinely print the offer screen before I hit the SUBMIT button and file that document away for future reference.

The only contract that actually gets sent to Fannie Mae is the prevailing contract, and that only happens after several additional documents have been gathered; so your contract form absolutely is NOT at FM. Your offer is represented only by a one-page computer submission. Your acquaintance at FM must have access to the asset manager's computer files to determine whether or not your offer was submitted.

Chris, you never came back and answered any of the questions or updated this entry. Does that mean that you ended up being wrong? Was the winning offer better than yours? Did you discover that your offer was submitted, after all? Did it turn out that your offer was incomplete?

This just happened to me because I would not use the realtor as the lender so he emailed my agent a refusal to submit the bid and stated that the offer was submitted and rejected all in the same email. He wasn't a very good liar.
I wouldn't mind getting a hold of your info to file a complaint.

What did you end up doing?.. I suspect a similar situation is going on with my bid... How did you find out your bid was NOT SUBMITTED?

jeffproctor@att.net

Typically, there are multiple offers on a bank-owned property. In this situation, the REO department may not look at all offers. They may only look at the top 3 or 4 offers. The order in which the offers were submitted is not considered. They want to see the offers that will net the most money. If your offer was not in the top 3 or 4, you usually do not receive a counter offer or rejection. You also do not get an opportunity to modify your offer. Fannie Mae will also have no record of your offer if it was not being considered. If your offer was lower than the accepted offer, there will probably be no action taken against the listing agent unless you can prove the listing agent violated the law or an ethical standard. You may want to review the Realtor code of ethics at realtor.org. If you can show the agent used his knowledge of submitted offers to ensure his own client submits the highest offer, you have grounds to file a complaint against the realtor.

If you only have suspicions but no evidence, your best course of action is to consult with your own agent to determine what happened. Your agent could call the listing agent to inquire why the offer was not accepted. If after talking with your agent, if you still suspect the listing agent violated the code of ethics, you can file a complaint. There is a formal review process that boards go through to determine if there was a violation. Admittedly, however, the number of complaints that result in any disciplinary action are few.

I have provided the link to the code of ethics.

How sure are you that the Listing Agent received your offer? Maybe there was a miscommunication between your Realtor and the Listing Agent. Fannie Mae is a busy place; if your contact isn't in the REO dept, they may not really have access to the right information. (I'm just saying, don't assume it was the Listing Agents fault or negligence). Call your agents Brokers first.. He supervises the Agents and might be able to sort out what happened. You can call the local Springfield area Board of Realtors if that doesn't satisfactorily explain the problem. Question: was your offer better than the one that won?

I would absolutely report it. I have been suspicious of a certain agent doing this but have never been able to prove it. Since you have the contact in the Fannie Mae office you could bring a strong case and really make a difference. I would like to know who the real estate agent was just to see if it is the one I suspected. Don't post it here for legal reasons but if you feel like sharing feel free to email me at jamivdb@gmail.com. As far as your agent goes, he/she may not report it for fear of herting future business dealings with that agent.