It’s not such a new type of fraud. My parents sold a house in Tucson, AZ in 2005. They interviewed three real-estate agents.
Two suggested listing prices of $375,000 and $400,000. The third suggested a listing price of $599,000. We looked carefully at comps and thought $575 – $650,000 so they used the third agent just because the others seemed out-of-touch.
The house sold for $595,000 the first week.
Looking back we suspect those agents were attempting to buy the house for themselves or sell to an associate prior to listing. Indeed, one of them stood in the yard and proclaimed “this is a million dollar view” prior to suggesting the $375,000 price tag.
