BOB GERKIN

Mr. Gerkin has a strange sense of ethics. After enjoying multiple communications with him over a span of a couple of weeks and informing him of my very serious interest in the property, on the day before I was to leave to drive to Wyoming to inspect the property and hopefully submit an offer to purchase, Mr. Gerkin formed me that he had already taken an offer on the listing which had been accepted. I subsequently learned from the seller that the offer had been submitted a week previously. I don't know where Mr. Gerkin learned how to sell real estate, but somewhere along the line he missed the part about submitting multiple offers. He never advised me of the offer he received until after it was already signed by the seller, claiming that he "couldn't tell me," which is nonsense. The bottom line is that he should have told me and given me the opportunity to submit an offer at the same time, allowing the seller to make the decision on which offer to accept (if either). Mr. Gerkin's choice to effectively ignore my interest in the property left me reeling and deeply upset. Having been a Realtor myself in years past, I remain at a loss as to his attitude and actions, except that they leave me questioning both his ethics and his ability to address the very premise of his job, which is duty to his client. A listing realtor's first duty is to the seller, and to ignore the opportunity to present multiple offers and possibly effect a "bidding war" was not in the seller's best interests. My interest in the subject property was not an idle one, a fact well-known to Mr. Gerkin, so why did he ignore me? Good question. No answer. To add insult to injury, he went so far as to discourage me from completing my trip to view the property or even presenting a backup offer, and I later learned (again from the seller) that he presented a backup offer from someone else! Does anyone else see a problem here?