Jennifer

Hi again, this is a follow-up from the orginal poster. First off, thank you very much for your responses. I'm really nervous about telling our broker that we want to cancel the listing (at present the listing is on HOLD). I know she's going to be upset. I work in sales and I know what a difficult thing it is to spend a ton of time on something that never closes. We do intend to use this agent when we re-list in the future. The fact that we were able to get the liquidated damages on this failed sale is squarely due to her persistence in making sure the contingenies were removed as quickly as possible. I know it is extremely rare for buyers to bail knowing they are going to lose their deposit and i can't believe they've agreed so easily to release the funds.

I think part of the reason I feel like we should give her something is because we are getting the liquidated damages (the 3% deposit minus costs incurred by the escrow company) and she's getting nothing. I know it's the nature of the business that things fall apart and I suspect I'd feel differently if we fell out of escrow without getting anything from it. I feel strongly that we wouldn't be getting these liquidated damages if she didn't push the removal of the contingenies along so aggressively.

I was speaking with another broker yesterday who told me that if we give her cash, she might be obligated to give some of it to her brokers office, just like she would have had the sale gone through. It is for this reason that I want to give her a gift certificate so she doesn't have to share that. I was thinking about a gas card.

How do I break the news to her in the kindest way that we want to cancel? I don't want an arguement and I think that's what we are going to get when we tell her. I've been very happy with her as an agent because she is very aggressive when it comes to business matters. I have issues with her aggressiveness with me on the personal level. - Tue Apr 29 2008, 08:34