Andrew Watters

February 12, 2026

This one is simple: my email below lays it out. This relates to a listing for a nice 4BR/3BA house in Half Moon Bay that I toured and that we made an offer on. It was never her intention to sell us the house and she shamelessly manipulated us and the other buyers by telling us we had a deal when we really didn't and were never going to have one. We would not have wasted our time, money, and effort on this transaction had we known that the realtor was a sociopath who intentionally put us through an emotional rollercoaster for no reason except her own gain.

Hi Mary,

My wife Tina just told me that the sellers (cc'ed here) accepted another offer and that we don't have a deal.  You had told us just yesterday afternoon that we had a deal, after your clients were (according to you) disappointed with the other buyer's offer and were considering our offer to be the best offer.  We then wrote the official written offer and sent it to you by 5 p.m., which was your requested deadline.  This offer is essentially the same as our last best offer from last time around in 2025.  You apparently texted Tina at 8:22 p.m. stating that the other buyer's offer was accepted, and therefore we don't have a deal after all.

It's now clear what happened here-- but correct me if I'm wrong.  You manipulated us into writing the offer on an urgent basis while falsely telling us the other offer was not being considered, so that you could manipulate the other buyers into increasing their number to our "sticker price" of $1,620,000.  Of course you didn't tell the other buyer that my wife is a broker and that her commission would be deducted from the purchase price, so our offer is really a net of $1,580,000 or thereabouts.  The other buyer believed they had to match the $1,620,000 even though they didn't really have to, and you basically stole $40,000 from them.  You then withheld their final number from us, depriving us of an opportunity to compete with their offer.  This shows that it was never your intention to sell us the house, and also that you obviously didn't tell the other buyer about the deducted buyer's commission in our offer.

You know that we are a young family of four that desperately needs a house to live in back in the Bay Area where my law firm is.  You know that we have dealt with you nothing but 100% fairly this whole time, keeping you continuously informed about our situation and renewing our interest in the property after you recently re-listed it.  Despite this, you remorselessly manipulated us and wasted our time and energy knowing that we were not going to get the property at all because of you.

What this is outright fraud by you, and it's also absolutely pathetic. The other buyer is going to sue you when they find out that you lied to them and made them "match" a price they didn't actually have to match. How will they find out, you ask?  Because you're going in my online Hall of Shame, which is a collection of disreputable and unethical people like you.  This is such a jarring contrast from your clients, who appear in the disclosures and elsewhere to be honest people.

This email is my first and last contact with you, and is not reflective of how I normally email people.  But this is an egregious case in which you have displayed sociopathic behavior for absolutely no reason, just because you could do so and get yourself an extra few thousand dollars. Shame on you for dealing with people this way, especially when you know they are in a vulnerable state and are excited about the prospect of concluding their house search, only to be baited and switched.

Regards,

Andrew G. Watters, Esq.

There was no substantive response from her, and no response from the manager of her branch of Compass.

Back to Hall of Shame.