Month: November 2006 (page 4 of 8)

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

First of all Greg, my wife’s cat now officially hates you. Today it was hazelnut. Reintroducing yourself to Russell was perfection. 🙂

But on to persuading the unpersuadable. Galileo faced down the most powerful institution outside of government that insisted the earth was the center of the universe. The church was terrified of the perception that what Galileo said seemed to contradict the Bible, which of course it did not. The church just recently apologized for its actions – and only centuries after schools first began teaching fourth graders that Galileo was 100% correct.

Principle – Perception may be ‘reality’ to a thirsty man in the desert, but the water still isn’t there.
Principle – False logic will always eventually be proven as such. Thirsty man discovers this by way of a mouth full of sand.
Principle – When the universe in which you operate disagrees with you – it’s possible you might be mistaken.

Gravity, when applied, works every time. However, much like dual agency, the consequences of applied gravity are not always desired. If I jump from a two foot ledge I’ll probably survive. If I fall or am pushed from the balcony of a 10th floor office window I probably won’t. Gravity is ruthlessly consistent. The consequences of its use are universally predictable. The apple, no matter how many times it falls from the tree, will never fall up.

The ‘angelic’ school of dual agency has its foundation in a false premise. The man who either accidently fell, or was pushed from that window either accidentally caused his own death, or was murdered. Gravity, like dual agency, has no will of its own. There are infinite examples available illustrating this. I’ll use just one.

You may use a gun for target practice. Or to acquire food through hunting. Or to avoid your wife getting half of your net worth. The gun didn’t do any of those things. The person shooting the gun did them. That’s a principle, and the gun doesn’t have an opinion. Even when my wife kills me accidentally while cleaning her gun, am I not just as dead as the murder victim?

Greg Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Please. Recognize that everything I say or write is true and do not argue with me. Thanks!

Hi! Welcome to BloodhoundBlog. My name is Greg Swann. I question everything. 😉

From my point of view, we’re still not getting any traction.

But single agency is not a viable business model.  Period.  A viable business model is one that would allow for unfettered growth (as long as it was filling a need to the consumer) and single agency is not possible if a company grows.

Without intending to quibble, agency is not about the vendor, his business model or its potential for growth. Agency is about the interests of the client, which are paramount to all others. If a particular business model violates agency, then, as Russell argues very cogently with respect to Redfin.com, it is criminal in se in states where agency is a fiduciary obligation.

There are about 925 agents with John Hall & Associates.  It would be quite stupid to preclude them from showing a listing so the seller (and buyer) gets the “benefit” of single agency.

This is not an argument against dual agency. It is an argument for getting rid of the broker/salesperson licensing laws. If we did that, then every listing agent would be alike unto a self-employed broker now. Dual Agency would still be possible, but it would be much easier to manage, since it could only occur when the agent represented buyers to his own listings. Major brokerages like John Hall could easily transition to affiliations or companies, instead — same cost structure, but no liability. We would still have to police for other forms of collusion or shady dealing, but Dual Agency would be all but eliminated.

In any case, arguing that refraining from Dual Agency would be impractical is not a persuasively-valid reason to uphold or reject it. As before: Sub-Agency was much more practical than Buyer Brokerage, but we got rid of it anyway.

The idea that the agent somehow controls what a buyer will pay and what a seller will accept only indicates a disconnect from reality.

I think this is a very weak argument. I want to deal Read more

by Greg Swann

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’m not really a Jesuit, I just play one in the blogsward. My mother had had enough of the Church before she went to high school, and, in consequence, I was sent to public schools. Those were actually quite a bit better then than they are now, but, even so, I bear my ignorance as a curse. I am too much aware that I am too much unaware, and every effort I make to correct this deficit serves only to deepen it. This is why I spend so much of my time crouched by Brother Quintilian, learning evermore to learn, to make up for my failure to have learned in the first place.

Say what?

In short: I am unswayed.

I have not heard what I consider to be a persuasively-valid argument in support of Dual Agency. Counting Our Lady Ardell in a comment, we have three testaments to personal integrity, and these I do not dispute.

But: So what?

The question is not: Can very trustworthy people effect Dual Agency in a way that occasions no overt objections from their clients? Surely this is possible.

The question is, rather: What policy should obtain in the absence of a presumptive angelitude?

The question is: Taking account that a certain percentage of licensees will be stupid, untrained, avaricious, uninformed or openly larcenous, what policy best protects the interests of the consumer — the alleged justification for our licenses?

Russell Shaw raises a lot of side issues that really don’t have anything to do with the debate. He gets quite a few of these sideways, in my opinion, but we can save those debates for other days. The meat of his argument is here:

My seller WANTS ME TO SELL THEIR HOME TO A BUYER I ALREADY HAVE – this is THE very thing they are hiring us to do.

That is: Dual Agency is valid because sellers want it. We turn to Quintilian, who advises us that, by this reasoning, Sub-Agency is also valid. Sellers want it, and many of them don’t truly understand that they no longer have it in Arizona.

Why don’t they have it? Because as much as sellers might Read more

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Thanks to Greg Swann for his gracious invitation. Posting on the 900 pound gorilla known as Bloodhound is a feather in anyone’s cap. I’m not sure there’s more than five sites in the country creating more ripples than he does. You set the bar pretty high Greg.

Before I begin – God bless Russell Shaw. Until he came along I almost always felt like the Lone Ranger on most subjects the real estate blog-world considered earth shatteringly important. I’ve enjoyed his posts on various subjects, and have found myself wondering if my dad had another son he never told me about. Anyone who has ever read my comments on blogs discussing the latest ‘hot topics’ will easily discern how much he and I agree with each other.

Buyer representation? National MLS? Dual agency? NAR for heaven’s sake? Give me a break. Until I became a blogger I was both ignorant and apathetic about what opinions were held by others in the industry on those subjects. The only thing that has changed is the entertainment I sometimes enjoy while reading about them.

I read Russell’s dual agency post and laughed so hard I spewed my morning coffee all over my wife’s cat. He absolutely nailed it to the wall. Remember the Clint Eastwood movie, Suddent Impact? That was Russell’s way of saying, “Go ahead, make my day.” But, I was invited to post my take on dual agency, and I’ll do that now.

In the 1960’s I worked for a real estate firm that had six offices and give or take 40 agents. About 75% of the agents were full time. In the two years I was the janitor, and printer (mimeograph) of new listings, they closed over 1,000 transactions – 100% of which were dual agency sales. (Quick, get Greg a chair, he’s looking a little pale.) That same firm also escrowed the sales. And if an agent was caught showing another broker’s listings, he was fired on the spot. The company’s broker/owner didn’t cooperate with outside brokers – as policy. How could that work you ask? His company always had more listings under $20,000 Read more