A couple are outraged after an estate agent made them jump through a series of bizarre hoops to make an offer on a house – before brutally rejecting them.
Sydney woman Maddie Langshaw, 25, and her fiancé Ante Jungbluth Miocic, 30, have been looking for a house on the NSW Central Coast for months.
They found the perfect home online, but couldn’t visit the property because they both work long hours and weekend shifts in the marketing industry.
So Mrs. Langshaw sent her parents out, and they came back with rave reviews and suggested this would be the perfect purchase for their daughter.
But the real estate agent refused to sell the couple until they met a series of requirements, including driving an hour to inspect the property themselves.
He then had the audacity to ask them to write a “love letter” about the house to the deceased homeowner’s daughter, explaining how perfect it was and what their future plans were as a couple.
Maddie Langshaw, 25, and her fiancé Ante Jungbluth Miocic, 30, who live in Sydney, have been looking for property on NSW’s Central Coast for months
The couple made an offer – before it was rejected – which provoked a mixed reaction of anger and shock and left them feeling like they had been ‘played’.
Mrs Langshaw grew up in poverty and has been saving for a house since she was 14, but says she is now losing hope of ever owning a property.
‘I’ve been pretty beat up ever since. It gets really tiring,” she told Daily Mail Australia.
The couple said they were on the phone to Mrs Langshaw’s parents during the inspection.
“They said it was structurally sound, that we could do a lot with it and that it was under budget,” says Ms Langshaw.
The couple texted the agent with their offer the same day before calling back.
He said the house belonged to a deceased man and his daughter was the seller.
“He said she wouldn’t sell to us unless we saw the house face to face,” Mrs. Langshaw said.
“We fell for it because we knew the woman would have a personal connection if it was her father’s house.”
Maddie has been saving for a house down payment since she started working at age 14, after seeing both of her parents struggle to buy a house later in life.
The couple was out running errands but immediately jumped in their car and drove an hour north after the real estate agent said he had a dinner date and couldn’t meet them later.
“Maybe I’m naive because I thought he was a real guy,” Ms Langshaw said.
“He said he had a good relationship with the owner, had sold previous properties for him and had a personal connection.”
Ms Langshaw found herself in tears at the stories the officer told as they “touched my heart deeply” and reminded her of losing her grandfather at the age of 19.
“I was invested at that moment,” she said.
Ms Langshaw said the agent spoke to the couple as if they already owned the house, telling them their offer was the best.
“He said, ‘Guys, you could cut down this tree. You could expand there,'” she said.
“As we were leaving, he told us our offer was great. But told us that we had to write a letter to the owner about what our vision for the property is, about our future and about us.
“He said the seller wants to know. We thought it was strange, but it was her father’s house and we really wanted it.”
The agent insisted that they inspect the property so they were connected to it, had them write a personal letter about what their plans for the house were, their future plans and who they are. He also told them that their bid had reached the ‘top score’, but then told them to bid more
The couple spent an hour on the letter and said it was so personal that they did not want to make its contents public.
The potential home buyers submitted the letter with their offer – and then the real estate agent went silent.
The couple said they had not received a confirmation email and decided to call the real estate agent first on Monday, but he did not answer the phone.
“He finally called and said, ‘I thought you were going to send a higher offer after I saw it on Saturday,’” Ms. Langshaw said.
The agent then gave them an amount and told them to make an offer “north” of it, prompting the couple to add an additional $5,000 to their offer.
Ms Langshaw and Mr Miocic were stunned after they received a phone call informing them that the house had been sold to another buyer – who had offered $5,000 more.
“We offered more but he didn’t tell us or give us the chance,” Ms Langshaw said.
The news was a blow to the couple, who are already struggling with high rent payments, with the cost of their one-bedroom apartment increasing by $100 next week.
‘We can’t even enter the market. We have a deposit, we have approval, but we are being messed with,” Ms Langshaw said.
She said she had been saving since she was a teenager and encouraged her partner to do the same after they met a few years ago.
‘I come from a single-parent family. I watched both my parents struggle to buy a house in their late 30s and 40s,” Ms Langshaw said.
“I wanted to trap myself.”
Originally from the Central Coast, Ms Langshaw moved to Sydney at the age of 21 for her career, and sacrificed a lot for her down payment, including living in shared houses.
But she loves the place where she grew up.
The couple, who both work long hours and many weekends in marketing, had their hopes dashed when the agent ghosted them, eventually informing them that the house had been sold to someone else.
‘When we recently got engaged, I wanted to move back because we started thinking about our future and possible children and we wanted to be close to my parents, surrounded by family – and have a garden.’
Ray White Parramatta wealth and sales director Amir Jahan told Daily Mail Australia he suspects the agent was using a delaying tactic on the couple.
‘Some officers want to buy time. The reason for this is that if their first bid fails, they have a backup buyer,” he said.
“It sounds like as soon as the first offer came through, they screwed over the second buyer.”
He said he would never tell buyers to write a letter about themselves or that they would come and inspect it if they were satisfied.
‘It’s a basic process. Yes to accept. No to decline. We respect the buyer with every offer we receive.
‘It’s a lot of money for any buyer. It’s money they’ve saved all their lives.
‘As a real estate agent, it doesn’t matter if it is a high or low offer, real estate agents must inform the owner of all offers or interested parties.’
Mr Jahan suspects that the agent probably made a high offer and was only taking advantage of the couple.
“He made them wait until he saw what would happen to the first buyer,” he said.
Tim McKibbin, CEO of the Real Estate Institute of NSW, told Daily Mail Australia he has never heard of an estate agent asking a potential buyer to write such a letter.
‘It’s extremely unusual. “I’ve been in the industry for more years than I can remember, and I’ve never heard of this,” he said.
“If it is a condition of the seller, the agent has an obligation to pass on the request (write a letter), but that is very unusual.”
Mr McKibbin said the moral of the story was ‘you have nothing until you trade in’ – and advises buyers to trade as soon as possible after doing their due diligence.
“And that’s true when it comes to a first home buyer or someone buying the MLC building in Sydney.”