An experience with CBRE Thailand

[Gilo]

I wanted to share with this forum a disturbing experience I recently had with CBRE's office in Bangkok.
If any of you would like to have all the details I will be happy to provide them. However for this forum it should suffice to mention the following.
At the end of last year I gave CBRE the mandate to sell a newly completed unit I had bought in pre-sale in a new development in central Bangkok and for which the title transfer in my name had not been yet effected.
After a couple of months, they introduced me a buyer, who, after paying a 10% deposit, refused to complete the purchase. First he claimed that the unit had a crack in the wall (it was actually a very insignificant defect which was fixed immediately by the developer), while later he claimed he was sick and therefore unable to complete the purchase. At the end it came out he had just changed his mind and wanted a discount on the price he himself had agreed on.
Despite the fact that I had the right, based on the offer letter, to terminate the contract and confiscate the deposit 30 days after the offer letter's date in case the buyer failed to pay the balance by then, CBRE insisted that I wait for this buyer to make up his mind. The whole thing dragged on for 6 months, during which CBRE never introduced me any other buyer, while it also failed to communicate to the developer the troubles I was having with the sale (by the way, CBRE was also the agent who had brokered my purchase of the unit so it would have been easy for them to just liaise with the developer and explain to them the situation caused by their client). Instead, last June I had to rush to Bangkok (I live in another Asian country) to negotiate with the developer a delayed date of transfer and conduct the second inspection of the unit, which in theory should have been done months earlier by the buyer.
When, at the end of June, I finally managed to impose my decision to officially terminate the offer letter of the buyer, CBRE claimed it gave my termination letter to the buyer, but unfortunately (as I discovered later on) they never secured a receipt from him. Also, they continued to try and convince the buyer to finalize the purchase, while I had given them clear instructions to focus on other buyers, since the offer letter of the first buyer had been already officially terminated. At the end, CBRE twisted my arm by saying that the only way I could sell the unit was by lowering the price of about 3% (compared to the originally formally agreed price) to entice the reticent buyer to conclude the purchase. I told them I could consider doing it only as a last resort, in order to avoid having to put the unit in my name. I also asked them, in that case, to half their commission to compensate me for my loss and the months of wait; they only agreed to go from 3 to 2%. I requested them them to continue to market the property at a lower price (in fact, in any case, I was entitled to keep the deposit of the previous buyer) and I reiterated that I was under no obligation with that buyer any more; as a matter of fact I had drafted a letter to him in this sense, which CBRE told me not to send. I also confirmed to them that I would conclude with the first person who would effect the payment: no obligation towards their buyer.
Nothing significant happened for a few weeks, while the buyer (according to CBRE) just kept playing hide and seek. Around mid August, another broker came up with a firm offer from another client. When I informed CBRE that I was going to go for it, they asked me to put it on hold and grant the old buyer another week to finalize the purchase; they even had the guts to tell me that they had put another buyer of theirs on hold while waiting for the first one to finalize based on the lowered price. I was appalled that they had not told me anything about the fact that they had another buyer, and that they had put him on hold without telling me! When I told them that I was not willing to wait, the balance of the first buyer materialized in a matter of hours, after 8 months of wait. I had no choice but to accept it (and reject the other buyer), because my lawyer advised me that I would have been in a weak position in case the old buyer would bring me to court to get back his deposit, thanks to the fact that CBRE had never secured a receipt for the termination letter I sent to the buyer and because they kept signifying to him an openness to conclude with him, despite my termination letter and despite my instructions. It was then clear that, all along, CBRE, for some reason, had backed the first and only buyer they introduced me, despite his dodgy behavior for 8 months, and they deliberately refrained from putting me in touch with any other potential client, trying to make sure that the first buyer would not lose his deposit.
When I asked them to write off their commission because of the losses I had incurred in view of their behavior, the negotiator gave me a categorical no. Their managing director never answered my calls.
I ended up writing to their global President and to their CEO for Asia to seek redress and all I got was an email from the Bangkok office's managing director putting forward some lame apologies. When I asked her to be more concrete and scrap their commission in view of their shortcomings, I was told basically get lost. Not a word from their CEOs.
In summary stay away from CBRE Thailand and CBRE in general.
If you want more details feel free to email me privately. There is in fact more to it, but basically this is the gist of this unpleasant experience.