RES Articles

Wow! What a controversial question! The good real estate agents and there are a lot of them would be genuinely upset that the question is even asked, the bad ones, well they probably believe that any dishonesty is for the greater good. Often that greater good meaning that they have earned a commission.

​

The reality is that most real estate agents operate within somewhat blurred lines. An example of this is do you think that it is dishonest to tell a buyer that another purchaser has made an offer on a house that they like, and they must make an offer within 24 hours or potentially miss out on the house? To put that situation in context what if the agent won’t tell you how much the offer is, when in fact it is $200,000 under the asking price? So technically the agent is telling you the truth. Is it dishonest for an agent to give feedback to a vendor that their house is worth $250,000 less than their own appraised range? After all one buyer said that is what they would be prepared to pay for it. Again, blurred lines.

​

As a vendor your expectation should be that your agent is completely honest with you, after all you are paying his/her wage. As a buyer there is an expectation that the agent is likely to embellish the truth. Isn’t that what all salespeople do? Of course, there is a fine line between embellishing the truth and being dishonest. It is extremely bad business practice especially in this day of social media to lie to clients and your business and reputation will suffer if you to do this. I remember years ago while I was working with a major real estate agency in Melbourne and a Queensland agent working within the same brand did something dishonest that made the nightly news. This dishonesty cost one of my colleges an amazing listing that he was devastated to miss out on. So, it is in everyone’s best interest to keep professional.

​

To work in real estate unlike most other jobs you can’t have a criminal record, so in theory you are held to a higher standard than many other workplaces. Having said that can imagine working solely on a commission to support yourself and your family? Would you be tempted to tell a “little white lie”? It might be easy to justify as being for the greater good after all.

​

One of my real estate mentors uses the term “you need to be able to tell the truth and get away with it”. An example of this is giving a potential vendor a suggested market value for his/her home that is realistic and based on current comparable sales. while another agent or 2 are telling them that the house is worth $100,000 more without any statistical evidence to back their claim up. In the industry this is called “buying the listing”. The real problem with this is that the agent that “buys the listing”, often gets rewarded. The reason for this is that most vendors don’t want to change agents as they have usually paid several thousands of dollars in advertising, and they end up getting the price that the honest agent suggested in the first place or often slightly less, plus they end up being on the market months longer because they were chasing an unrealistic price.

​

In summary to answer the question “are real estate agents dishonest?”, I would say that blatant dishonesty exists but is not the norm. However, stretching of the truth and exaggerating are commonplace and unfortunately you could even argue that it is expected. Which is interesting because when I ask clients what is the most important issue to them when selecting an agent, the answer more than 50% of the time is trust!