This morning at our weekly office meeting, our team leader -- who also happens to be the chairwoman of the Texas Association of Realtors, was commenting on how much more diligent each of us needs be in our transactions. We need to watch details more carefully, keep all documents, provide appropriate copies to brokers, remind sellers of the importance of accurately filling out sellers disclosures, etc.
She said that there appears to be a "rash" (as she put it) of demand letters against real estate agents. She'd mentioned that her theory was that this may be in part to the legislation from a couple of years ago that made it much more difficult to pursue legal action against physicians -- to curb frivolous lawsuits. As a result, she mentioned that perhaps lawyers were now looking to fill the vacancy and that Realtors might be targets. This got me thinking....
I don't disagree with the theory -- and wanted to add that it's probably exacerbated by the fact that so many new agents have gone into real estate in the last few years. With the large amount of noteriety from "boom and bust" media stories, features on Realtors on HGTV and TLC, etc., and many online and discount brokerages making it fairly easy to start a career in real estate -- more and more people have flocked to the industry. As a result, there are a lot of new agents out there who are making rookie mistakes (and some seasoned ones....).
So -- I find myself checking, double checking and triple checking my documents; ensuring that my systems are current and working smoothly to ensure that we're covering ourselves; and making sure that I read Realtor/Texas Realtor publications to remain current on legal cases and new laws.
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