Buying and Selling: The Realtor Curse II

Remember my friend who was selling her home in upstate N.Y.? She IMed me with a terrifying tale. Seems her realtor--a former co-worker (Warning sign #1)--nearly bollixed her entire home sale by inexplicably overestimating her buyer's potential property taxes by almost $3,000, then demanding to keep his commission! Unbelievable. She managed to restore the sale, took a minimal financial hit, and reported his behavior to his brokerage, the Greater Rochester Realtors Association, etc. The buyer's broker even agreed to take less of a commission himself in order to complete the sale.

Things like this are why the realtor qualification process needs much more vetting. There's a very pertinent comment from the liveblogging of the Real Estate Technology Standards that sums this up:

Real Estate Agents are not “typical” in the sense of corporate America. They are essentially 1 million individual proprietorships. It’s not like GM or someone who can say “All employees will use a token to access their PC at the office” Agents are mobile, work on multiple PCs and independent.

Precisely. If I thought we could trust the current administration to push strong uniform federal regulations for realtor training, I'd go there--but we can't, so it's gotta be done at the state level. Here's a nice little reminder from the Real Estate Journal on the prevalence of mortgage fraud.

The MRIS blog is a great read, by the way, and a tip of the fedora to Inman for pointing the way.

Posted at April 13, 2006 05:09 PM

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Remember my friend who was selling her home in upstate N.Y.? She IMed me with a terrifying tale. Seems her realtor--a former co-worker (Warning sign #1)--nearly bollixed her entire home sale by inexplicably overestimating her buyer's potential property taxes by almost $3,000, then demanding to keep his commission! Unbelievable. She managed to restore the sale, took a minimal financial hit, and reported his behavior to his brokerage, the Greater Rochester Realtors Association, etc. The buyer's broker even agreed to take less of a commission himself in order to complete the sale. Things like this are why the realtor qualification process needs much more vetting. There's a very pertinent comment from the liveblogging of the Real Estate Technology Standards that sums this up: Real Estate Agents are not “typical” in the sense of corporate America. They are essentially 1 million individual proprietorships. It’s not like GM or someone who can say “All employees will use a token to access their PC at the office” Agents are mobile, work on multiple PCs and independent. Precisely. If I thought we could trust the current administration to push strong uniform federal regulations for realtor training, I'd go there--but we can't, so it's gotta be done at the state level. Here's a nice little reminder from the Real Estate Journal on the prevalence of mortgage fraud. The MRIS blog is a great read, by the way, and a tip of the fedora to Inman for pointing the way.