Mark Hove

Mark was our buyer’s agent. With our first offer we submitted we had a bad experience where the agent gave a "verbal counter offer." We pushed back a little, indicating we would really like that in a formal contract for us to sign, but Mark persisted and we wrote up a new, higher, offer. We did not get the house and felt like we were taken advantage of during negotiations. The next time we put in an offer on a house, we spoke with Mark and expressed that we did not want to do that again. We wanted a counter from the seller in writing before adjusting our terms. He expressed understanding and agreed. The night that the offers were being reviewed he called us and told us that "we got a counter offer in writing." We were excited and agreed to sign the counter immediately. However, Mark then said it was actually in an email, but it could be signed and done "in 15 minutes" if we could rewrite our offer. Hours later, we found out that the listing agent specifically said in an email that the seller "has chosen to revisit" our offer and "this is no[t] a counter offer." When pushed, Mark admitted that he actually asked for the other agent to produce a formal counter offer in writing and she declined. Rather than presenting the situation to us and letting us make the decision with all the information, he hid important information about the situation during the negotiation to get the deal done and to avoid following our direct instructions. We won the bid, but it was a very trying emotional experience for us because our agent chose not to put our interests first. We had a right to make the decision with all the information available, which he purposefully misrepresented. Throughout the process we never felt confident that Mark was listening to us and following through on our instructions (such as communicating in specific ways with other agents). For example, we said more than once that we wanted to see a particular house as soon as it became available, and he asked when we could go see the house on a different day. We had to explicitly ask him to set up a showing with a different agent since it turned out he was unavailable. He also had only one recommendation for a lender in the area, who couldn’t help us. We also addressed these concerns with Mark directly before our accepted offer and he did not make any changes to communicate with us better. Overall, we did not feel that Mark fulfilled his obligation to us as a buyer’s agent. Instead of advocating for us and following our instructions, Mark said and did whatever he felt he needed to sell a house. We are disappointed with the level of service Mark provided. We asked the managing broker at 501 Realty to be transferred to another agent through closing.