RealTown's RealTalk

Ronny, I have to agree with you, being a real estate agent of integrity is more unusual than most of us would like to admit.  I know I do not do as much business as those movers and shakers but I sleep soundly knowing the people I have been involved with were treated right and may come back someday.  There is a lot to be said for doing people right, you know the old what comes around goes around thing.  If we want a better reputation, then we need to start earning it, on client at a time.  Things could turn around very quickly if we did, but it would not be effective unless mandated in order to keep your license.  Too many have made too much doing things the wrong way, and like the old saying goes; if a majority in this industry keep doing business the same way, we will keep getting the same results.  

While I agree that some agents lack integrity and probably need a refresher course on ethics, there are some agents who do not behave in this fashion. As an Association staff member who has only worked in Professional Standards for a brief amount of time, I have seen the “bad eggs” and the “good eggs”. It is very easy to gain a negative perception of the real estate business and real estate agents when one spends their day handling ethics complaints and requests for arbitration. It has been reassuring to see that some of these individuals do manage to work out their differences and even withdraw complaints after communicating with the other party. I think that Education and Effective Communication are the keys to becoming more ethical businesspeople. I hope that most agents will try to educate themselves on the Code of Ethics and communicate with other real estate professionals in an effort to amicably deal with differences of opinion. Like many professions, real estate is highly competitive. Competition is good and healthy to some degree, but it should not interfere with a business person’s sense of right and wrong.