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When You Have to Report a Real Estate Agent
Trust me, nobody really wants to report a real estate agent. But sometimes the violations are so flagrant one must. We all make mistakes, honest mistakes. We’re only human. But what about the agents who deliberately set out to deceive and then claim they made a mistake? Or worse, refuse to rectify it? I wonder if I should report them. On the one hand, I pretty much leave other agents alone and don’t turn them in, even when I spot blatant, unethical behavior. I’m not the ethics police.
Although, there was that agent who published a map of “bad neighborhoods” in Sacramento. On top of that, he gave the areas racist nicknames and thought he was clever. That was beyond an ability to ignore so Fair Housing heard about that. I subscribe to the theory that you don’t want to be part of the problem. That agent? He moved his operation to Arizona and is still selling.
Whether to report a real estate agent for a violation is one thing, but another aspect is whether one should one talk about it in public. If it’s information the public should probably know, I say, yes, even if it tends to taint the profession. Other agents may disagree. Agents as a group try to protect each other so nobody discovers what idiots some are.
So, I’m just gonna tell you what happened. Without naming the website, I tried to update a new listing but the site told me the home had been claimed. Not surprising; it was listed before. I clicked on the details and noticed the home was listed for sale by an agent other than the previous listing agent. But it had the old listing number attached to it.
I called the seller to find out if she had any knowledge of this agent. Nope. The seller called the agent. Immediately, the agent dove into bait-and-switch mode. The seller made it clear that it was her home she was calling about and she was not a buyer. The agent mumbled something about this being a very confusing situation and promised to remove it.
A few days went by, and the listing was still published under that agent’s name. Hmmm. I wondered how many other Sacramento listings were swiped and misrepresented. Usually, people who would do unethical things do other unethical things. That agent had a couple of pages worth of listings. I ran the first 5 addresses in MLS. Not one listing belonged to that agent.
I finally notified the staff at that website, and several people responded. It’s difficult to regulate, they say. Well, how about you make the poster check a box that says, “If this listing doesn’t belong to me, I authorize you to charge my credit card a $1,000.” I heard giggles. At least the website removed the listing.
Why should the public care? Because the Internet is unregulated. It’s difficult to trust some of what you read. You should not rely on information found on questionable or unknown websites. If you’re searching in Google for “how to make dog biscuits,” you might not want to follow the recipe published by survivalists-who-eat-dogs dot com.
Nobody wants to report a real estate agent. It’s a big hassle and half the time the authorities do nothing because they do not understand the finer nuances. I recall a time an out-of-area agent wanted to co-list a home with me, and I did not want to co-list with that agent. That agent gave me his marketing plan that included cutting out buyer’s agents so he could double-end all of his transactions. That was his schtick. Unethical. Against MLS regulations, too.
The California Department of Real Estate did not care. This is what we face. Ambivalence.
Picking the Buyer When Selling Homes in Sacramento Could Violate Fair Housing
Regular sellers with equity — and even sellers of homes in Sacramento who end up doing a short sale — can choose their buyer and establish requirements that the buyer must meet. You know why they can do this? Because they own the home and, with some legal exceptions, sellers can decide what kind of person buys it.
This is not to say that a seller can discriminate against any of the protected classes under the Fair Housing Act. For example, a seller could not say I am interested only in selling to a family with kids or to a guy in a wheelchair. You can’t pick a protected class and exclude others or vice versa. This is yet another reason to hire a top Sacramento real estate agent because agents are supposed to know, understand and follow the Fair Housing Act, among other regulations.
I’ve personally had buyers say to me they did not want to buy in a neighborhood in which minorities of any color live and, believe it or not, I have stopped the car and told them to get the hell out. Fortunately, we were still in the parking lot and not on the W / X freeway. They can go find some redneck yo-yo to work with them, but not this agent. Sadly to say, there is always some doofus moron who doesn’t give a flying fig about Fair Housing, but I’m definitely not one of those.
Sellers are allowed, though, to choose an owner occupant, for example, over an investor. I asked our lawyers. That’s almost a moot point as most of the investors have left the market in Sacramento, which leaves a bit of breathing room for Sacramento home buyers now, but it’s good to know. Btw, if you see that sales are down by 1/3rd, it’s because the investors have split. But some are still hanging out, writing lowball offers in hopes that if they throw enough crap at the wall, something will stick.
If you want to ensure the quality of your neighborhood and care enough to please your neighbors when you depart, then you might want to consider selling to an owner occupant over a buyer who will rent out your house. Even if that home needs fixing up, a rental investor is not always the answer. Whenever there is an increase of rentals in a neighborhood, the value of the other homes around it tend to go down.
How Do You Handle a Racist Neighbor in Sacramento?
It’s a bit ironic for me to read that April is Fair Housing month, given what happened yesterday. It happened in a somewhat quiet neighborhood in Woodland, made up of mostly tract homes, built in the mid-1970s. This particular home has 3 bedrooms and 2 baths, and it’s a preapproved Cooperative Short Sale through Bank of America. The family, first-time home buyers, had just received the short sale approval letter and were informed they could close escrow. They arrived at the home early yesterday morning to do a home inspection.
As they walked up the sidewalk toward the home with their agent, the next-door neighbor came out, as next-door neighbors often do during a home inspection. Coming over during the home inspection is a great time to greet new neighbors and welcome a family to the neighborhood. That’s because, for the most part, there is not a lot for buyers to do during a home inspection, except stay out of the home inspector’s way. I was not present at this meeting, so my information is third-hand, but apparently the neighbor did not welcome the new family. Instead, he began yelling and hurling racial slurs at them. He is accused of saying he would move out of the neighborhood if this family moved in. At the top of his lungs. In the middle of this quiet working class neighborhood.
You think it won’t happen in your back yard, but it does. The sellers say the neighbors never exhibited any of this hostility or prejudices when they lived there. The buyers called the police because the neighbor made threats of violence against them.
I’m not even so sure it was a racial prejudice as much as a religious prejudice — but all hatred, because people are different, is hatred. It’s vile. It’s shocking. It’s incredibly painful and sad. It’s sad for the victims who endured such vicious wrath. It’s sad for the racist because he is uneducated and ignorant. It’s sad for all of us because this kind of hatred still exists.
It makes me want to put a sign in the yard all right. A sign that says the neighbor is a racist splashed with a big red arrow pointing toward his house. But he’d just pull it out of the ground and smash it up, maybe use it to break the windows on this house. That’s what people like him do.
Do You Want to Live Near the Russians?
By that title, I am not talking about the 49th state admitted to the Union, no, no, no. I’m speaking directly about Sacramento. I’m a Sacramento real estate agent, and I could say that I know where the Russians live, but that would only send the CIA after me, and having the FBI hot on my trail is bad enough. I don’t need one more government agency chasing Elizabeth Weintraub all over Sacramento. No, Sirree. Oh, wait, I didn’t mean to say the FBI, it’s just a California district attorney’s office who wants more information on the bad guys that I sometimes write about.
But the other thing is I do know where the Russians live, but I can’t tell you. If I tell you, I could be accused of breaking the Fair Housing Law. The Russians are a protected class. Put that into your Eisenhower pipe and smoke it. I’m not going to say anything bad about the Russians, either. Some of my favorite people hail from Russia. I’m trying to think of some Russians other than my housekeeper and a REALTOR from Daytona Beach, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
I got to thinking about this because a) many people demand that real estate agents perform acts that would get a real estate agent investigated if the authorities knew or watched the agent do it, and b) people don’t know much about real estate agents, and that which they do know for certain, absolutely certain, is often absurd. Like John Oliver said at the Crest Theatre last night, and I paraphrase, about 50% of Americans are positively devastated and at odds with each other 100% of the time. This is just regular people. This is not real estate agents he’s talking about.
When we got on the elevator after Oliver’s performance to rise to the fourth floor and find our car, I looked around at the people on the elevator. Usually, I don’t like standing in close knit quarters with a bunch of strangers. But these people at least had something in common with me; I mean, they had been to see John Oliver, which means if the elevator suddenly got stuck between the floors, I probably would not mind having to participate in a sudden crisis with this particular group of strangers. It would be better than, say, being in a bus load of Republicans that flew off a cliff while on vacation in Utah.
Call it the LOST syndrome. You know, there you are on a plane flying to some exotic place like, oh, maybe French Polynesia, and the plane suddenly nose dives. Next thing you know, you’re waking up a beach splattered in palm fronds with a bunch of people you wanted to kick while standing in line to board. Do you like these people? Would you rely on these people to strangle a pig with their bare hands so you could eat something other than coconuts? That’s something to think about the next time you are standing in a crowd of people whom you do not know. Why, a meteor could hit the earth and spare this circle of people and you.
Do me a favor and think about that the next time you ask this Sacramento real estate agent where the Russians live. You want a real estate agent who has more than 30 years of experience and is a top producer representing you? Sure you do. Then, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
