If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

So late this afternoon the listing agent, representing the sellers of Dry Rot Manor, calls us up and says they're still interested in dealing with us and would knock $2,500 of the sale price. What cosmic re-alignment makes the sellers go from "we want nothing to do with you ever again" to "please let us sell to you, here, have $2,500!"?? I suspect some sort of miscommunication was happening. Anne and I make a decision and tell our real estate agent and attorney what we've decided. Our real estate agent tells the seller's agent, who tells the sellers, who make a decision, and so on.

There are plenty of opportunities for noise and I don't trust real estate agents to communicate things clearly any farther than I can throw them.

This is precisely why I prefer dealing directly with the sellers. I wonder if real estate agents are legally bound to deliver messages to their clients verbatim. I think not. My snap jujjment is that the real estate agents are exploiting asymmetrical information for their own benefit and they often fail to accurately convey the spirit and letter of messages sent to their clients.