Chad C. Martin owner California Gold Real Estate and Development

Chad C. Martin owner California Gold Real Estate and Development

September 6, 2005

On May 4, 2005 we placed our home for sale with Chad C. Martin’s company, California gold real estate and Development. We signed our contract in our home at 3905 Weybridge Way, Antelope, CA 95843. At the time of the signing we asked Mr. Martin for copies of what we had signed and he assured us that he would get copies to us. We have still not received any copies after several verbal requests. Homes in our area are selling on average in twenty-three days. After our home had been on the market for approx. 10 days, we lowered the price by $15,000.00. We subsequently lowered the price of our home 2 more times for a total of $40,000.00 less than the original list price in an effort to attract bidders. During the time that our home was on the market, it was shown at least 40 times, by different realtors who all commented on how under priced our home was. To our knowledge, Mr. Martin showed our home to prospective buyers only one time.

We were shown a total of four bids on our home. We accepted one of the bids in early July, but it fell

out of escrow. 2 of the other bids were very close to our asking price, but those bids came in at the exact same time as the bid that we accepted. The fourth bid was $63,000.00 less than our asking price and we rejected that bid. All of the paperwork that we signed was signed in our home with Mr. Martin. Again, we never received copies of any of the documents that we signed.

Since the beginning of July we have had no offers on our home, any flyers or open houses to promote our home and no ideas on how to sell our home from Mr. Martin. After our home was on the market for

approximately. 90 days, Mr. Martin submitted a bid to purchase our home himself claiming that he felt sorry for us. He presented a bid to us in our home on August 15, 2005, that was $40,000.00 less than our asking price. On August 17, 2005 we called Mr. Martin and told him that we were not going to accept his bid and that we would like for him to sign a letter of unconditional release of contract. He agreed and asked us to type up a letter and send it to him for him to sign. On August 20, we contacted him about the letter and he explained that he was putting together a new company with friends and he would be able to get us between $10,000.00 and $15,000.00 more for our home. When we told him that we were not interested he proceeded to tell us that he still had time left on the contract and for 120 days after the contract expired if we sold our home, we would owe him compensation. Due to the fact that we still had no copies of anything that we signed, we were unable to check the terms of our contract. We asked him to drop off the signed copy of the unconditional release of contract and he agreed. When he never showed up to our home, my husband called him to ask if he was still

coming and got his voicemail. Two and a half hours later my husband called Mr. Martin again and left him a message stating that if we did not receive the letter of unconditional release of contract by 9:00am Monday, August 22, 2005 we would be forced to contact the Department of Real Estate Enforcement. Mr. Martin returned the call and stated that if we were going to leave threatening messages on his voicemail he would have no reason to come to our home. He said that he would mail the letter and we would have it by Monday. During this conversation my husband asked him why our house hadn’t sold and Mr. Martin replied, “Why don’t you tell me.”

We did not receive any reply from Mr. Martin on August 20 and when we finally did receive a letter from him on Wednesday, August 24 it was not the unconditional release of contract that we had sent him upon his request. He sent us a Cancellation of Listing document with the claim that upon signing it we agreed to pay him $1000.00 for services he had performed. The note that he included stated that once we signed the document he would take our house off of the MLS. After later speaking to our attornet, Mr. Martin has decided that he wants 3% of our home sale or approx. $11,500.00 as compensation for not being able to sell our home ethically in more than 3 months. He is the only realtor I know of who makes his clients sign a 6 month agreement. After researching the Standards and Practice of Realtors from the Sacramento Association of Realtors, we found two ethics violations. Article 9: Realtors for the protection of all parties, shall assure whenever possible that agreements shall be in writing and shall be in clear and understandable language expressing specific terms, conditions, obligations and commitments of the parties. A copy of each agreement shall be furnished to each party upon their signing or initials. Article 16-11: Realtors shall make any request for anticipated compensation from seller/landlord at first contract. While Mr. Martin claims that in our contract we agreed to compensate him if our house sold in the 120 days after the contract expired, he never told us how much compensation and we have no contract to reference. We would like to be released unconditionally from our contract with Mr. Martin immediately. Schedule a facial today and recieve a free gift! Christina

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