With a slew of unsold listings piling up in the Tallahassee MLS, an old practice used by real estate agents has returned and it could actually be seen as real estate fraud today.
Of course, I suspect it wouldn't be called fraud in our legal system, but it is nothing short of a real estate scam being perpetrated on frustrated home sellers and it needs to be brought to light.
So if you are thinking about selling a home, ensure that you learn this Realtor trick so that it isn't used on you.
Sound Tactic Or Slight Of Hand?
There are many real estate agents who over-promise and under-deliver when they list a home for sale. After all, more than half of the homes listed over the past three years failed to sell with their initial listing agent during the contract period.
Over time, as home sellers become agitated because their home isn't sold, these real estate agents look for ways to appear busy and prove to the homeowner that work is being done.
Enter the unscrupulous listing agent.
The real estate agent tells the seller that they will "re-list" the home in the MLS, suggesting that the additional listing (now there are two MLS listings for the same property) will bring more exposure and give the seller a better chance in the market.
Hogwash.
Or they tell the seller that they will cancel the listing, put it in again, and this will give it a "new" status and everybody will see it again and it will change it's "days on the market."
Horse hockey!
I consider this pure fraud, and I believe you will too if you look at what buyers are doing when they shop for a home online. You can't trick them into buying a home.
There are some homes that have two or three simultaneous listings in the MLS, and I suspect it is for only one of two reasons:
- Ignorance - The agent was trained to use the tactics that were necessary when the MLS was published in paper form. Back then, we would list properties several different ways so that the home showed up in each section of the book. But the MLS has been electronic for 20 years, and internet home searching makes redundant listings a thing of the past.
- Fraud - As demonstrated above, perhaps the homeowner thinks the agent is creative or working "extra hard" to sell the home.
Would you really want to hire an agent who is either ignorant or fraudulent?
Countering Unscrupulous Real Estate Tactics
If you are interviewing agents for the job of selling a home, ask them their thoughts on using simultaneous listings of your home. Ask them if they think it is (or is not) real estate fraud and why.
This will give you some insight into their true marketing intelligence and whether or not their real estate company should be handling the sale of your home.
And if you want to sell a home in Tallahassee with the firm that denounces real estate fraud practices, just drop me a note and we can schedule a time to review the best way to sell your home in today's real estate market.
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