- Jurisdiction
- California
A friend was selling her house in California. She signed with the same agent she had used to sell her last home, and purchase this current one. The agent and her 'people' staged the house for market. However, my friend covered the costs of this as the work was done, and my friend very actively participated in the process and work of staging the house. After the first open house (with strangely almost no turnout) my friend's circumstances changed some, and combined with the lack of interest, these changes led her to call the agent to take the house off market and cancel the contract. The agent responded angrily and shortly later present a 10k+ bill for the staging. My friend would initially have been happy to cover any real expenses they had that hadn't already been covered, but this bill is grossly excessive. Subsequently, we learned that the agent wasn't even an agent. One of her 'assistants' is a broker, and it is actually his name on all paperwork, even though she presents herself consistently as 'the agent'. They did not follow through on removing the listing or returning the contract, leading my friend to have to threaten to report their misrepresentation of the lead person as an agent. Currently, a bit more than a week in now, the house is off market, but the canceled contract and other materials of my friend's have not yet been returned. The 'not actually an agent' and the broker are now saying they will return the cancelled contract after she signs an addendum creating an 11k bill. My friend is of course not going sign any such addendum. She's been told that they can't really pursue any such billing, and that she doesn't actually need to take any action at this point. However, the question now is "Does my friend need to report the 'non-agent' as a protective move in case they try to follow up with a small claims suit or similar?" If she reports, it seems some sort of vindictive response is likely. My friend would probably prefer to let things alone. But is worrying and not find a clear answer. Which course closes this whole mess up in the cleanest most secure way????
