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.