What should happen when a potential homebuyer is ready to make an offer on the home of their dreams and their Realtor becomes suddenly unavailable?

Considering that not everyone is willing to be a heartless beast — like in this case with another Realtor's family emergency — when it comes to homebuying, the question of ethical responsibility on the buyer’s end is definitely worth asking.

On open-forum Reddit,  anonymous user realestate_tempname posted the following text less than a day ago, and already more than 37,000 people have read it.

Here’s the title: For Realtors(TX): Etiquette question, tricky situation

And here’s the quandary:

Question, TL:DR My realtor is possibly still in the midst of a dire family emergency, which happened right in the middle of trying to put in an offer on a house. Haven't heard from her in a day or so. I don't want to disturb her, but I do need to know what's going on. How would you as a realtor like to be addressed in this situation?

Question 2: If she is unable to work the next few days, is there any way to put an offer on the house I want? I don't want to lose it, and it's a competitive market.

Before you die of shock in learning that a potential homebuyer is actually being considerate towards their real estate agent, let me ask the following: What do you think should happen here?

Would love to read responses on the below message boards.

And indeed, Realestate_tempname is right to be concerned. We could very well be sliding toward a sellers market, especially if that market is in Texas, as the title suggests.

One response is to text the Realtor and say you’re moving on if they don’t get back to you.

Another is to contact their offices and explain yourself to whomever answers the phone there.

Personally, I like the response from a user named Texas Realtor best: 

Realtor[s] owe fiduciary duty to their principals. In the event that we can't perform our duties we can refer the principal to someone else.

Call her broker and explain the situation – the broker will immediately assign you to another agent and your agent will collect a substantial referral fee.

Luckily, in this case, it never came to that.

Here’s the resolution:

I've already gotten in contact with her, as I'm going to view the house one last time before making the offer, so we will be seeing her tomorrow. I'll probably bring this possibility up for in the future, as the situation with the family member looks to be ongoing for at least a while.

My only thing is, I really like working with this realtor and trust her; I'm not looking forward to having to try to get to know another person just for the actual negotiation process. But I don't want her to feel obligated to stick with us, either. I'll just kinda see how she seems tomorrow I guess.

All is well that ends well.