Apparently, Mr Gao has some experience in real estate if not an expert. Myself is part-time agent. I experienced the first situation as mentioned above. The solution is to tell listing agent that you'll report to Commission if not all offers being reported to seller. Real estate agency is regulated business, once the agent find guilty of such, he will lose his licensee and out of the business.
As trick 2 and 3 mentioned by Mr. Goa, I would say it's very difficult to implement and very rare. The reasonable way is to let inspector to "exaggerate" the costs of repair a little bit and go back to bargain with bank.
