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Stopping the Unethical Behavior of Sacramento Realtors
There are some people in this industry, like me, who really feel the pain when presented with the unethical behavior of Sacramento Realtors. Not every Sacramento Realtor, of course, is unethical. Far from it. In fact, it is a small handful of agents who are loose with their ethics. But the disturbing aspect is they know they can get away with it. There is nobody to stop them. Not the Sacramento Board of Realtors, not the Ethics Committee and most certainly not the Realtor Code of Ethics. Even brokers seems reluctant to confront the behavior.
Although I have been toying with the thought of approaching the DRE. I simply feel like when we hear about the rare incidences of unethical behavior of Sacramento Realtors that we owe a duty to the industry to say something. Otherwise, we become part of the problem.
It starts when a buyer calls to reiterate a conversation held with the allegedly unethical listing agent. The agent promises the buyer offer acceptance, but only if the listing agent double-ends the sale. Even though the agent has multiple offers from other agents as well. But lo and behold, all of a sudden the dual agency offer gets accepted. No surprise there.
First, this unethical behavior of Sacramento Realtors drives a wedge between consumers and exclusive buyer’s agents. Agents are not supposed to swipe another agent’s client. Second, it deprives the seller of the right to counter all of the buyers. Possible dishonest dealings with the selling agents. Third, it appears to openly violate the listing agent’s fiduciary to the seller. Is it possible the seller could have made a higher profit if bidding from all buyers had been allowed?
The thing is an outside party can’t prove it. The buyers probably don’t want to get wrapped up in an ethics case and will most likely vehemently deny the conversation even took place. All they want is the house, and they don’t care how they obtain it.
Obviously.
In this particular situation — of which I am not a party, btw, this is third-hand information relayed to me — it gets worse. The agent whose buyer got snatched through the unethical behavior of Sacramento Realtors was at a sewer inspection. As this coincidinky goes, the agent overhead a conversation from the sewer inspection guys talking about the unethical behavior of Sacramento Realtors. Sewer guys admitted an agent asked them to falsify a sewer report. Who was it? The very same agent who purportedly broke fiduciary.
It’s pretty bad when even the sewer inspection guys call that agent unethical. How low can an agent go? And what can be done about it? It makes a person lose faith in her profession when this kind of crap is allowed to continue without consequences. It takes years to build a solid reputation in Sacramento real estate and only seconds to ruin it. Perhaps we can hang our hopes on what comes around, goes around. Bound to be karma.
Agents don’t openly talk about this sort of stuff in real estate because they don’t want to be tainted by it. Further, the public has enough problems with trusting agents as it is. But please know it is rare that this happens. It is definitely not the norm for Sacramento real estate. Not something agents with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team would ever do.
Red Flags on Purchase Offers for Sacramento Homes
Every Sacramento listing agent owes a fiduciary to her sellers to try to ensure that the offer the seller has received is a bonafide offer, especially those that seem a little bit weird. I’m not about to say that all out-of-area buyers, especially those from the Bay area, are crooks or are not to be trusted, but I have seen my fair share of purchase offers that require additional scrutiny and most of them seem to stem from the Bay area. To be fair, though, there are crooks right here in Sacramento, and there are doofus real estate agents right here in town who enable them.
Part of my job to my sellers is to look for what can go wrong and advise accordingly. The first red flag I might see in an offer is due to the fact the agent might not read the MLS listing nor adhere to the requirements. I suspect they do not always read all of the instructions because they either don’t have full access to MLS, they are confused, inexperienced, or they just didn’t bother to look for attachments. Some agents probably do not want to comply, so they simply ignore the requirements.
The second red flag is the offer itself might appear as a template. This means all of the standard information is typed in a different font, often an odd color, and a different point size, and the pertinent data such as property address and sales price do not match. Agents use this procedure when they are creating multiple offers and throwing those offers to the wind. They think nobody notices this.
The third red flag is the offer might be missing information. Certain boxes might be left unchecked and blank lines will be incomplete. Attention to detail is not always a strong suit among thieves, perhaps the APN number is missing or the agent’s license number is not there, which are important items to include.
The supporting documents are often a mishmash of papers tossed together. The proof of funds might not contain the buyer’s name. The earnest money deposit might be from a new stack of checks, numbered in the low 100s and containing no date nor identifying information. The pre-approval letter is most likely outdated if not expired.
You might ask yourself why do they bother to do this? What is the point? The point is the investors think they are clever and smart to lock down as many properties as they possibly can while they figure out which ones they might want to buy. They might make offers on 10 or 20 listings but be able to buy only one. This practice is not advised and many lawyers say it is against the law, but when has that stopped the crooks?
When you look at all of this damaging evidence, coupled with the fact the agent has not shown the home to the buyer, these are not really offers. If you need further proof, just ask the agent a question such as did you show the home? The agent won’t reply. And there you go.
