While showing a property last night to an investor client I'd helped buy a home almost a year ago, the conversation turned to recent transaction in which another Realtor had listed and sold a house for a local businesswoman.  The seller occasionally performs work for the Realtor who listed her property, and she's mentioned on the Realtor's website as a "local partner."  My client and her friend were not feeling at all friendly about that relationship.  Their feeling was that the two of them must be collaberating somehow to exert an unfair advantage over the people who eventually bought the busnisswoman's property.  They were asking me if that didn't constitute some sort of conflict of interest, and I don't really think I convinced them that it didn't.  "How is that any different," I asked them, "than a landscaper who regularly mows a grocer's yard and also happens to shop at his boss's grocery store?"  I think the suspicion resulted because the businesswoman is an interior designer, and was therefore perceived as being in the real estate business somehow, but I was still astounded at their concern.  Why is it that Realtors, who are held to a higher standard of ethics than the average bear, are eyed with such suspicion by a large segment of society?  OK, ok, I know there are bad Realtors out there, just like there are bad examples of every other profession you can name.  But sometimes we don't even have to make a mistake to be looked at as shady characters.  How can we combat negative public opinion that is so undeserved?