I was reminded of this quotation by Mohandas Gandi after discovering by accident that a Buyer's Agent who had submitted an offer for one of our REO Listings had wasted no time to trash our business practices on her Facebook blog!! Her exact quote was " Writing an offer on REO property on sellers terms. Listing agent provided 3 pages instructions on bold print: NO LOW BALL OFFERS accepted, please do not ask for credit, inspections, disclosures, please do not call.....Frankly, I can't wait for this REO era to be over"!
Well, my natural inclination was to trash her in our blogs! But then we would have a village full of idiot realtors who are all blind! This however, caused me to go back and review the 3 FULL page instructions we do provide to help some agents who have never written an offer on REOs.
This section doesn't say anything about asking for credit, inspections, disclosures. In fact, it's illegal to advise clients against inspections. In the section of 3 page document about Highest & Best Offer, we state, "Please, No Low-Ball Offers since it's a waste of everyone's time.
So, you will be the judge if these are accurate representation of our intent to educate and facilitate the process of liquidating properties for our clients and help buyers agent become more effective. "Please, No Low-Ball Offers since it's a waste of everyone's time" is NOT the same as "NO LOW BALL OFFERS accepted". There is a huge difference here since not accepting offers is illegal and we are bound to submit ALL the offers to our sellers. But discourging low-ball offers is completely different.
This is perhaps why Realtors have a similar reputation of attorneys and politicians. Because some of us, see a piece of information and spin it to gain an advantage. It shows desperation and complete disregard for the ultimate cost which will be born by ALL realtors. The fact that she's trying to use Social Media to build her business is understandable, but to mis-quote and mis-inform her audience is simply sleazy.
So, instead of exposing her sleazy tactics, I went to her facebook page and dropped a polite and private note that perhaps she should be careful not trash the other principals in her ACTIVE transactions. I mean, what sort of idiot you have to be to risk your active transaction by trashing the other principals!?
What would you do if someone mis-used and abused your published information and you were in a transaction with her. I would like to hear from you.
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