How safe are independent agents?
Can the fox protect the chicken?

There is no question that there are many ethical real estate agents, but those who are violating their duties and obligations may well be outnumbering them in today’s competitive environment. Being ethical is a private matter and only the practitioner knows how honest and ethical s/he is or how s/he justifies violations of ethics.

The question is not whether commissioned agents are ethical or not, nor whether a specific agent would or wouldn’t engage in unacceptable conduct without the client’s knowledge. The question is the following: Does the traditional way of selling real estate tempt, lure and entice even the most ethical agents to violate their duties and obligations toward their clients, when they choose to do so, and financially gain from it? Does the traditional independent, sole-practitioner, commissioned agent model provide incentives and rewards for agents who fall for the temptation? The answer is an unequivocal and indisputable YES!

The truth is, a sole practitioner real estate agent in today’s real estate environment can violate rules, regulations and ethical duties/obligations and gain from it at the expense of the client. If an agent can violate his duties and benefit from it, then we can speculate that under the right circumstances, an agent might violate his duties for personal gain. The incentive, temptations and rewards are very high; a tiny “white lie” can earn the offending agent thousands of dollars more at the expense of the unsuspecting and innocent client.

How then is the consumer protected?

Unfortunately violations of conflict of interest are hard to detect, prove, implicate or convict. The costs of proving and implicating exceed the benefits so much that hardly anyone pursues it, even when they know it exists. That is why it continues and prospers.

Therefore, there is no real protection against this in traditional real estate, except for the morality and professional integrity of the agent him/herself. If the client is lucky, the agent will not be tempted. To be trusted with the chicken, a fox would have to be either well supervised, well fed or be vegetarian!

How Do Right Home^® Agents Compare?

Right Home agents are well supervised (they are salaried employees under supervision), they are well fed (they receive a salary plus a bonus), and because we have eliminated double-commissions and significantly reduced our commissions overall and our conflict of interest with our clients (i.e. no temptation and incentive), Right Home^® agents are effectively “vegetarian!”

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