Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend and I just made the very exciting decision to purchase our first home together. We are thrilled, with one caveat. His younger brother has been a real estate agent in the state we are purchasing in for less than a year. After talking at length about it, we decided to go with a realtor we found who has been selling houses for over 30 years, lives in the neighborhood we are looking at, and has glowing reviews. We were expecting the conversation with his brother to be difficult and tried to approach it with sensitivity, but I don’t think either of us anticipated the level of blowout we are dealing with. Not only is his brother furious, but so are my boyfriend’s parents. His brother is accusing us of “deceit and betrayal” and says he has “no room for two fake people in his life.” He thinks that we purposely misled him about our timeline for purchasing a home when in reality we made a decision three days prior to attempting to talk to him. I know that his feelings are hurt and he feels like we don’t believe in him, which I feel terrible about. We have tried to reiterate that we think he is a great agent, but since we are first-time home buyers, we think it’s best to go with someone with more experience, as well as avoid mixing family and business. Both my boyfriend and I would do anything to support our loved ones, but this is a huge financial commitment, and we agree that it’s too big of a deal to make our decision based on his feelings. Ultimately, the other agent is a better fit. I feel like he and his parents aren’t looking at the situation from our perspective at all. We are hurt by their reaction—his parents didn’t so much as say congratulations—and have no idea how to proceed with his brother who says he doesn’t want us in his life and refuses to sit down, hear us out, or even let us apologize.
— Not in Escrow