I've got a buyer

Darcy was just looking at the new listings, something that we do throughout the day and noticed that a house that had just expired was re-listed.  We had contacted the owner of that house regarding another listing and she  brought up this other house that was close to expiring.  She wanted us to go and tell her what we thought about this second house. 

The just listed house was a starter type rental property.  We planned to get into her rental property that was still listed, but it didn't have a Realtor lock box on the home.  Rather a push button lock box.  We would have had to call the agent to ask her for the code.  We went to the property, looked over what we could see an found some comparables.  We called and told her that we didn't wish to lie to anyone to get into a listing and proceeded to discuss the pricing and marketing of the home.  She said she would arrange for us to get a key to the rental property.

Today the rental property(which expired yesterday) was listed by another agent.  We started to wonder if the agent had gotten the listing by telling the owner that there was a buyer for the property in order to get the listing.  This is just something that burns us.  We don't believe in telling an owner we have a buyer unless we have a buyer.  The problem is that it has happened before.

I just think that it is unprofessional to tell someone a thing that isn't true, I also think that it will come back to haunt that agent.  The long and short of it, is that if there is something about the house that we didn't see, like it smelled or was functionally obsolete, and we had told that lie, listed that property and it didn't sell in another six months, how would that owner look at Realtors?  I guess what I am ranting about is that these type of real estate agents need another line of work.  Be honest, it will, in the long run make you a lot more money and it has the added benefit of allowing you to look at yourself in the mirror.