From the perspective written in the article, I don&#x27;t understand why the seller is portrayed as upset: they did the deal at a price they agreed upon. Just because another buyer came in &quot;after&quot; that had a better price changes nothing; this could happen in a non-assigned transaction too. This part, at least, is a natural part of the mechanism of price finding in the market.<p>It is an interesting question why the sellers are mispricing their homes by as much as 30%, but if you know anything about the Vancouver real estate market, it is perhaps not that surprising: numbers move very fast, a lot of inexperienced non-investors own property (that they have usually owned for a very long time) and have perhaps never been involved in a deal of such scale.<p>If I were the <i>buyer</i> in the first transaction, however, I&#x27;d be very upset with my real estate agent though: his job was to advise me, not to be my adversary in an internal negotiation. He did not act in my interest, despite representing himself as my agent. I would be promptly reviewing my real estate contract and the real estate laws in my province for words like &quot;fiduciary duty&quot; and given the size of the transaction, probably consulting a lawyer.<p>A stark reminder that real estate agents are <i>not</i> your friend -- and actually, that is true regardless of what side of the transaction you are on. They are almost always paid by the selling party and still even have non-aligned incentives even for that party: preferring to get a sale done quickly than to get a better price for their client (as they only earn a fraction of the increase, but there is a high fixed &#x27;minimum&#x27; property price in any given jurisdiction; a second sale will do much better for them than a 5% increase in their current sale).