Agents work hard to bring on new clients and earn their trust. As the saying goes, trust is much easier to lose than it is to gain. One agent in Otaki, New Zealand lost the trust of someone who didn’t hire him in the first place.

A home owner decided to sell his home privately rather than hire an agent, but that just hit the wrong nerve with agent Brendon Heenan, who took down the “for sale by owner” sign and replaced it with his own.

The owners lived in another city, so they did not know about the issue until weeks later when they realized inquires about the house had stopped. They checked to see what was going on and found Heenan’s sign where their sign had been.

The owners reported the incident to New Zealand’s real estate administration, the Real Estate Agents Authority (REAA), and complained that they may have missed a potential sale from the calls that were directed to Heenan’s office. Talk about a home kidnapping!

Heenan claimed that he had called the owners to discuss representing them for the sale, but no agreement had been reached. He was over-eager, so he put up the sign in hopes of generating a sale. The REAA didn’t like his excuse, and fined him $1,500 and required him to take ethics training to keep his license.

We always suggest avoiding hiring a bad agent, but they didn’t even hire this guy to begin with!

Read the whole story at Stuff.co.nz.