I can’t believe this still happens. Even worse, I can’t believe a real estate agent would even comply with the seller’s racially discriminating requests. This is the quickest path to a short real estate career. Did the agent participate in the discrimination or did he just handle the situation poorly when he initially found out about the seller’s intent to discriminate? While it’s not against the law to reject a buyer’s offer, it is against Fair Housing Laws to reject it based off of race or any other protected class. Continue reading
Category Archives: Agents Behaving Badly
Dog Held For Ransom For Unpaid Rent
Talk about harsh. The real estate agent acting as property manager for this New York apartment complex not only got this tenant fired from her job, but held her dog for ransom to attempt to collect back due rent. Her inability to pay her rent stemmed from being a victim of identify theft. Apparently this property manager wasn’t too sympathetic. While there is no doubt that she owed rent and they had a right to collect, the means in which they pursued the matter were a bit harsh. Creative, but harsh. Continue reading
Realtor Gives Listing Presentation to Grieving Family At Funeral
Unfortunately, this is a true story that happened to me personally. I was approached at my grandmother’s funeral by a real estate agent, wanting to list the house I was about to inherit. The story gets worse…. Continue reading
Former Real Estate Agent Chauffeured A Mummified Corpse In Her Car For Months
In Costa Mesa, California, a 57-year-old former real estate agent, was caught with a mummified corpse of a woman in the passenger’s seat of her 1997 Mercury Marquis. The police are trying to discover the female corpse’s identity. All they know is that she was a transient from the Fountain Valley area, known to the driver as Signe. Police estimate that Signe had been dead for three to ten months due to the amount of decomposition and mummification. Her body only weighed 30 pounds when she was discovered. Police officials are studying her DNA and dental records to discover her identity. Continue reading
Selling Property in Perth Is Easier Than You’d Think
Owner’s property sold without his knowledge by scammers. At least they used a real estate agent.
Apparently it’s pretty easy to sell houses in Perth, Australia, as one property owner found out when he discovered his $485,000 investment property had been sold by scammers posing as the property’s owners. The sale occurred in June 2010 and was conducted by a series of emails and phone calls claiming the owner needed to sell his duplex due to financial hardship. Continue reading
2264 Real Estate Clients In Dallas/Fort Worth Are Getting Ripped-Off
Here are a couple of shocking statistics you should know about. Did you know that as many as 4.2% of the houses currently listed on MLS for sale in the Dallas/Fort Worth area do not have any pictures in their MLS listing? And 4.7% only have one picture. Added together, that’s 8.9% out of all active real estate listings in DFW. That’s a total of 2264 homeowners currently trying to sell their house with inadequate MLS listings? Continue reading
The New Road Warriors – Mad Max Meet The Mad Real Estate Agent
Real estate agents may be on the bottom of the popularity list, ranking below lawyers and used car salesman, but we shine in one area. Real estate agents have the distinction of ranking as high as #4 on the latest list of “top 10 crashers by profession,” according to insure.com. While Doctors rank #1, Real estate agents are still a force to be reckoned with. Insure.com mentioned one possibility for real estate agents ranking high in automobile accidents was that they spend so much time in the car, often being distracted by clients. I’ve often observed real estate agents trying to combine interacting with clients, reading maps, talking on a cell phone, and looking at house numbers, with driving a car and navigating unfamiliar territories. With multi-tasking like this, something’s got to give. Continue reading
Pimping Real Estate By Using Sex
To get buyers’ attention, real estate agents are resorting to sexual images in ads to sell real estate listings. Here are a few examples. Continue reading
Man Stabbed With A Real Estate Sign
Sure a real estate sign is an effective tool to sell your house, but I bet you didn’t know it makes a pretty nice weapon too. One man discovered this the hard way when he was impaled on a real estate sign. North Fort Meyers, Florida deputies were called out to handle an assault at River’s Edge Mobile Home Park. When they arrived at the scene, they discovered Zeke Smith had been stabbed. While stabbings in Fort Meyers aren’t an unusual occurrence, the fact that the weapon was a real estate sign instead of a knife made it quite newsworthy.
Real Estate Agent Tries To Earn Business At A Funeral
Sadly this is a true story that happened to me before I became an agent.
About 17 years ago, my grandmother passed away and I inherited the family house in Montrose, Alabama. At the time, I lived in Memphis, Tennessee so I didn’t know too many of my grandmother’s friends in the Fairhope, Alabama area. So, during the visitation, the day before the funeral, people were coming up to me introducing themselves all day long. During the visitation, I noticed one individual who was purposefully hanging back. Continue reading
Real Estate Agent Charged With Theft And Tampering Of Public Records
A real estate agent in East Stroudsburg, PA was charged Friday with falsely reporting a property he owned as being mortgage-free, selling that property and then keeping the money from the sale for himself. I can’t believe he thought he could get away with it considering the staggering amount of paperwork and disclosures you have to sign when buying or selling a house. I can’t believe the title company didn’t pick this up. Continue reading
Real Estate Broker Accused of Embezzlement
Somerville and Peabody Police yesterday arrested Kandy Farkhanda Shah, a real estate broker on several charges, including embezzlement and larceny. Kandy was mentioned to be the real estate agent representing the listing. A woman submitted an offer to Shah to purchase the house with a $7200 deposit. According to The Summerville News, she then asked Shah to provide documentation of the sale’s approval which Shah allegedly refused to do, police said. When the deal did not go through, Shah refused to refund the woman’s money, police said. A few of Kandy’s other alleged victims can be found at too. Continue reading
Virtual Staging: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Lies
Imagine looking at a picture of a beautiful house with an updated kitchen, new carpet, paint, floors, and best of all, at a very low price. You jump into the car with your real estate agent by your side and you check it out. When you arrive, the beautiful house in pristine condition you saw pictured on the MLS listing has been replaced by something quite different. What you see is an ugly house with dingy walls, stained carpets, vandalized kitchen and not a shred of copper to be found in the place. Believe it or not, it’s the same house pictured in the MLS, except that the house in the MLS has been “virtually staged.” Continue reading