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I just received a call from a client that really angered me. The initial question was "How can you determine if a business is legimate?" The client had done a web search, checked Dunn and Bradstreet, white pages, yellow pages, internet yellow pages and the Better Business Bureau.
It seems that the client received an unsolicted offer of employment from this company and had sceduled an interview and was doing research to find out more about the company. She had two different phone numbers and has been calling and leaving messages for several days, but no one is returning her calls. She had two web site addresses, one of which had been deleted for failure to renew domain name and the other with no physical contact information.
The company was a real estate investment company that specialized in forclosures. When she told me that, bells started ringing in my head. It has been my experience to find that many of these investment companies and apprentice programs are at the best deceptive and at the worst ilegal or a scam.
There is little doubt in my mind that my client had done due diligence and there were many warning signs. Could the company be legimate. It could, but how can a person know?
The call angered me because the deceptive programs and scams are a blight on the real estate profession. The get rich gurus become a part of the industry in the eyes of the consumer and it is the very practices of these types of gurus that brought real estate license laws into existence in the first place.
What can we as real estate professionals do to seperate ourselves from those who would use real estate to cheat and con others. What can we do to help protect the public and the industry.
I apoligize for the rant, but I just needed to get this off my chest.
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