You find some of the most interesting stuff on Google.
I was just searching the Web for a listing and found myself on one of those do-it-yourself sites that cater to the "For Sale by Owner" crowd. Agents advertise themselves there as well. That particular site permits you to browse listings by zip code and when I searched "54850", an ad popped up for a female agent who is marketed on that site as a "Madeline Island Property Specialist". The site also states that she is a "Madeline Island real estate agent".
Her office is located in northeastern Wisconsin, about 275 miles from here. I've never heard of her before and to my knowledge, she's never listed or sold anything on Madeline Island. With no office within several hundreds of miles from here and no past record of sales or listings, how on earth can she be a "Madeline Island real estate agent"?
She's not alone of course. The allure of Madeline Island as an upscale recreational community has tempted other real estate agents to try the same thing. A couple years ago, I had lunch with a client who told me his friend "knows all about Madeline Island and she's sold lots of homes there". When I researched the name, I learned that this agent had listed one property on the Island in the past ten years. That property never sold. Her office is in an eastern suburb of the Minneapolis & Saint Paul metro area.
So it's not all that uncommon to see out of area agents masquerading as being knowledgeable about our Apostle Islands area marketplace. But it begs the question, is this ethical?
Consumers don't know the difference, of course. Some agents may consider this a benign exaggeration. Others see it as blatant misrepresentation.
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