The people who are defending my conduct are the smart...

The people who are defending my conduct are the smart individuals who realise they too can benefit one day from the story I told - either as the purchaser, or the vendor.

Some of you here are also giving far too much credit to the Real Estate agent's power of persuasion in 'negotiating' the price down on my behalf. You are assuming that the Real Estate agent was an all-mighty, highly-skilled negotiator with the super-human ability to make vendors eat out the palm of his hand. Just because the agent took it upon himself to act as my 'Buyer's Agent' certainly didn't guarantee anything. Remember that the Real Estate agent wasn't the person who accepted my offer. He wasn't the person who signed the dotted line. He may not have even said a single word to the vendor - who will ever know?

Once again, regarding the legality, it is up to the real estate agent to decline the dual-role of sellers agent/buyers agent. The naive and uninformed Mr Loobs wasn't to know that there was a conflict of interest, nor is this legally relevant. If the agent accepted, then he is only putting himself at risk.

And have none of you even considered that perhaps the dominant reason the vendors accepted my offer was because this house had been rotting on the market for 10 months and they actually wanted to SELL IT? And that my offer was the BEST OFFER they had? I couldn't help that, and I certainly couldn't help that they were easily persuaded. Above all, the fact that the vendor accepted my offer probably had something to do with it being the RIGHT PRICE. They finally got to sell their house - I did them a huge favour.