Flushing Fiduciary

It has got to be tough trying to make a living as a real estate agent in a bubble market like San Diego.

Think about it for a moment. Since August, prices dropped faster than autumn leaves, inventory ballooned from 3000 units in 2004 to close to 20k units today, sales have plummeted to the lowest levels since they started keeping track in 1988, and seemingly half the population has a real estate license. Is it any wonder that agents feel the need to explain to us poor ignorant souls that the media is misleading us and we really ought to be buying?

I suppose in real estate caveat emptor is still the rule, even though disclosures abound to protect the buyer from the seller. But as poetic license flows freely on real estate blogs, only common sense is there to protect the potential buyer from the agent desperate to make a sale in a depreciating market.

Some things you just expect. It’s a scorpion and the frog thing.

What you don’t expect to see is an agent publicly sell out their client on their real estate blog to justify their opinion of the market:

For example, we have a seemingly impossible listing in Encinitas Ranch. It was likely a fraudulent sale that occurred late last year when the home sold at $1.2 million (with 100 percent financing), and had a value of something less than $900,000 (because the listing had gone off market with that price).

Did this agent just suggest that their seller “likely” committed loan fraud?