After some emails back and forth with our real estate agent, Ava and I were finally ready to send in our offer paperwork last Saturday. Then I happened to pull up the page for the house: to our shock, the house had been delisted! Not sold, just… removed. Very strange. We talked to our agent again; he speculated that they might have decided to rent it out, and said we should probably just send in the offer anyway.

Several days pass. Silence. They neither accepted, rejected, nor countered our offer. This, our agent tells us, is very strange. Our hopes sink. What could possibly be going on?

Well, now we know: Real-estate brokerage suspended by regulators. Turns out the selling agency has been involved in all kinds of fraud, and the listing for the house we want was pulled off MLS along with all of their listings. Since then, the owner has put the house back on the market – at an even lower price! – and we’re about ready for another try at making an offer on it.