Lying Realtors

Reason Not to Lie #37

Lying is hard, telling the truth is easy. By definition, every good Realtor juggles: multiple clients, dozens of showings, lots of parallel deals at varying stages. It's hard enough keeping all the details straight and presenting them coherently to your client(s); not tripping yourself up in a web of lies would seem to increase the "difficulty factor" exponentially.

--Ross Kaplan, "Freakonomics Rebuttal"; City Lakes Real Estate blog (3/23/08)

Faithful readers of this blog might be surprised to hear me say that, as far as I can tell, Realtors seldom lie -- and good Realtors never do.

There are multiple, reinforcing reasons for that: it's unethical, it's bad business, it's hard to do (see above), it's easily found out, etc., etc.

On that last score -- it's easily found out -- I heard a good anecdote recently about a Realtor who felt the need to "embellish" the turnout at a Tuesday broker open. If you didn't know, at least in the Twin Cities, the custom is for Realtors to tour the new inventory each Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Instead of simply reporting to his clients that, for whatever reason, the turnout was poor, the Realtor "borrowed" a slug of colleagues' business cards to leave out on the client's dining room table.

What happened next?

The client wanted to hear the broker open feedback directly from "the horses' mouths," and decided to call the agents directly.

When not one of them turned out to have actually attended the broker open . . . the client did what any client would -- and should -- do: fired the Realtor.