If your agent is urging you to buy a particular house over others because s/he gets an extra fee to sell that one to you, and you don’t know that (if at all) until you’ve already arranged financing and gone to a lot of other trouble and are sitting at the closing table, you have been materially disadvantaged by your so-called agent’s withholding information from you until the last second. Information which might change your decision-making process. At that point, your so-called agent is actively acting against your interest.

To say this is dishonest and distasteful is an understatement, and if you think that having your agent hiding things from you so that he can get you to the table and squeeze an extra buck out of you, is normal and good business, then you deserve the same from everyone who services you.

There are two problems with TV news: is it doesn’t have enough time to tell the whole story and it is audience/advertising driven. I know because I worked in television business for 20 years prior to real estate. There is grim truth behind the adage “if it bleeds, it leads.”. Audiences watch controversy. News directors know it and look for it, and when it isn’t there they have been known to create it. Thus the birth of the investigative reporter.

No slam on Brahm Resnik here. He did his job well. He asked provocative questions and got answers interesting enough to make a story. But I do have an issue with the editing of the sound bite. They clipped the part of my answer wherein I explained that the role of the MLS is to serve the brokers and agents, not educate the public.

Indeed, we go to great lengths to avoid conversations with buyers and sellers because most already have fiduciary relationships agents and brokers. We risk interference with that relationship and potential legal liability whenever we talk to them. ALL communication has to go through the broker, often via the agent.

Should the buyers be made aware of all elements of the sale that affect them? Absolutely. Does bonus commission affect them? Potentially. (Certainly not if they have a buyer’s representation agreement with their agent wherein the agent declines all cooperative commissions and is paid per contract directly by the buyer.). Is it the MLS’s job to tell buyers what offer the listing broker made to other agents, whether or not it affects them personally? I think not. It is the job of the agent to inform and when needed to disclose all facts relevant to the transaction. By putting this info in the agent remarks, not the public remarks, we give the buyer’s agent options as to if and when it is appropriate to disclose this information, rather than make that determination for them. That’s the part of the agent’s business I was referring to when I made that comment.

One more thought. When the payment to a buyer broker depends on a percentage of the sale price, and rises as the buyer pays more, not less, for the home, how is that being fiduciarily responsible to the buyer client? This seems to me to be a more important issue than one very large bonus payment that could probably never be earned given the condition of the short close window.

Bob Bemis
ARMLS

The buyer will know to view a house and the things a Realtor says about it differently if he knows the Realtor showing it to him gets a special bonus versus other houses if he buys that one.

This goes to the very crux of the problem with the whole profession – the profound conflict of interest in having a “buyer’s agent” whose interests are in direct conflict with his client’s, and even more so where, as here, the nature and magnitude of that conflict is not only not disclosed to the buyer, but is both materially different than the standard arrangement and actively hidden by the so-called buyer’s agent and the seller.

The difference is those are salespeople FOR THAT BUSINESS. A buyer goes in knowing the salespeople are trying to get all they can for the business.

If a seller wants to be his agent extra, fine. But if my buyer’s agent, who is supposed to be representing MY best interests, is being paid a huge bonus to steer me to buy a particular house or pay a specific price, then I need to know about it.

MLS # 2784513