[quote=AN][quote=danthedart]Well thanks for your honesty. Unfortunately, being honest about being dishonest doesn’t really get you anywhere ethically.
In all likelihood I would NOT do the deal.
It may not be illegal for the buyer, but for the agent its a violation of of their agreement with the seller and most likely fraud. Obviously you’d never be able to prove that in court, but that’s what it is.
I am sympathetic to a buyer because I would be tempted to do the deal too, but I am not sympathetic to the agent at all. Agents facilitating these deals are ripping off the people they’re supposedly representing.
No, the difference between you and I is that you would dive into the deal thinking you’re doing nothing wrong. If I did the deal, which I honestly do not believe I would, I would be doing the deal knowing I was doing something unethical.
Isn’t that the real question here? Is this deal ethical or not? It’s not about my personal ethics or your personal ethics. [/quote]
I don’t see how the agent selling a house at listing price (the price the seller agreed to) is unethical? Lets take this scenario and place it in 2004 time frame instead. Would it be unethical for the seller agent to sell the house at asking price knowing full well they probably get a lot more offers at probably higher price if they just wait it out a few months? Is it then also unethical for the seller to agreeing to a price that’s considered a good deal to the retail market?[/quote]
Well under the original scenarios that SD Realtor posted about, we don’t know if the house is being sold at listing price. We don’t know if the seller was presented all offers. We don’t know what the seller was told.
We know that the seller couldn’t possibly have gotten all the offers that they could have gotten because the listing was never really listed.
We know that the agent listed the property on the MLS for some reason other than trying to get offers on the property.
We know that the agents are not being forthcoming with what is happening with the deal.
We don’t know the specifics, but we know that the agents do not want to be honest about what’s going on. That’s what leads me to believe this is unethical.
Everything else we’ve been saying, is speculation.
I’d say that if the seller knows that he/she could get better offers and if he/she knows that the agent did not really market the property at all and the seller agreed to all of that and the purchase price, then its not unethical. If the agent has been completely honest with the bank or the seller about the details of the transaction, then it’s not unethical.
