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When a Sacramento Real Estate Agent’s Reputation is All That Remains
It wasn’t that the buyer’s agent forced me to open Microsoft Word — which takes so much longer than any of my other applications to load, patience, patience, to find the document in which I record decades of unpleasant transaction notes — it was that many real estate professionals may now associate this particular agent’s name with unethical real estate practices. After the day is said and done and the years are over, and all the crazy people have crawled back into their caves, the reputation of a Sacramento real estate agent might be all that lingers.
An agent’s reputation should be fiercely maintained.
Successful agents, for example, are often slid under a microscope to study. Sometimes these agents are unjustly attacked by other real estate agents for stupid reasons, mostly because competitors become jealous. It’s the nasty underbelly of the real estate business and a silent consequence of success. Aspiring agents admire success but it can also be a tug-of-war internally for them. Regardless, we all need to treat each other with respect. As REALTORS, we must adhere to the Code of Ethics.
To be kind, some agents can experience, let’s say, a lapse of better judgment.
For me, I don’t look so much at what other people say when they screw up, I look at what they do. If a buyer’s agent calls me to talk about a client’s offer, spends a long time discussing the buyers’ love affair with the home but fails to mention that the agent has written a second offer for that buyer, well, not only is it considered unethical, but that kind of practice could be against the law. Buyers can’t buy two homes if they can’t afford to buy both. Lawyers can scream this until the cows come home and agents don’t listen.
As what happens in these types of problematic situations is both offers tend to get accepted. At that point, the buyer’s agent had another open window to say, hey, I have something to disclose. But no, the agent’s lips are zipped until the buyer bails on both accepted offers. Ordinarily, a listing agent wouldn’t even know this has happened, but when she discovers it — and the truth often manages to come out — she’s not the only person. Both sets of sellers know, and so do all of their friends. The people at title and escrow know. The other agent whose seller received a cancellation knows. All the people that agent knows know. And so on.
This is how a buyer’s agent’s reputation can turn into mud.
And for what? A pair of buyers who bailed on the buyer’s agent and decided not to even to move to Sacramento after all?
Article 16 and a Sacramento Agent’s Listing
It’s not often that I have to ask another real estate agent to stop contacting my clients, but generally when I remind an agent that asking sellers pointed questions about selling their home — apart from making sellers uncomfortable — could be considered interference in another agent’s listing and a violation of Article 16 of the Code of Ethics, the offender stops.
Article 16 pertains only to a REALTOR. Not all real estate agents are REALTORs.
The agents might get ticked off at me for calling them on it, and some of them do. Comes with the territory; it’s a risk I take. There are agents who practice ethics and those who don’t. Those who practice ethics respect agents who do, and those who don’t, well, it doesn’t really matter what they think.
Agents sometimes interfere because they haven’t stopped to consider the consequences of their actions, or they feel that what they are doing is innocent (in their minds) and they haven’t looked at the hard, cold facts of how a Sacramento real estate agent or anybody else with a rationale mind might view it. Some agents think they are “helping” and they forget / overlook that they are interfering. I get that.
But if I sit on the fence and say nothing, I am perpetrating this behavior.
It’s a fine line to walk in this business.
Last week I asked an agent to please stop emailing my client with questions about selling her home. This particular seller’s name and personal information is not in MLS. If a buyer’s agent has questions, the agent can ask me, and I’ll be happy to assist. I don’t care if the agent knows the seller from church, through another professional association or spotted the seller at the gas station and struck up a conversation at the gas pump. Buyer’s agents are not supposed to grill, discuss or ask represented sellers questions about selling their home.
Like I said, this seller’s name and contact information is not even listed in MLS. There was no permission given to contact the seller. It’s bad enough when an agent calls a seller to schedule a showing, for example, and asks how many offers the seller has received. Big no-no. But agents have absolutely no right to even call a seller when the showing instructions state otherwise.
The real estate agent responded that the agent was not emailing my client, the agent was texting.
I see. It would seem that this Sacramento real estate agent might need to explain that:
- sending emails
- texting messages
- calling on a walkie-talkie, cell or landline
- writing letters
- dipping one’s finger in vanilla to write a secret message on white paper
- sending up smoke signals or
- standing out in front of the seller’s house and yelling
are all methods that are unacceptable behavior to contact the seller of a listed home to discuss details about selling the home.
All we are trying to do here is get to the closing table in one piece. We are all in this business together.
