May 10th - 2007

Protect your reputation

NAR’s most recent Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers showed that potential clients look for a good reputation and trustworthiness when choosing a REALTOR®.

NAR’s most recent Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers showed that potential clients look for a good reputation and trustworthiness when choosing a REALTOR®.
 
As a REALTOR®, your brand is your name and you need to think about what you want your name to say to people. All it takes is one problem transaction, complaint, or lawsuit to hurt your reputation and cause you great financial and personal stress as you attempt to defend your position.
 
Helping REALTORS® learn how to protect their brand is the goal of one of OREA’s newer continuing education courses, Real Estate Salespeople, Beware! The course focuses on ethics, privacy and disclosure – three areas in real estate that are subject to complaints and/or lawsuits. Based on the book by lawyer, author and OREA Instructor, Mark Weisleder called Real Estate Salespeople, Beware! – Protect Your Deals and Increase Your Success by Avoiding these Legal Traps, the course warns against approaches and practices that will hurt you as a real estate professional — even to the extent of landing you before RECO's Discipline Committee or before the courts.
 
According to RECO, the most common infractions brought before the discipline committee include claims of false advertising, unprofessional conduct and unethical behaviour, and fraud. And with the advent of the Federal privacy law came complaints to the Privacy Commissioner. To address these issues, the course is divided into three modules: Module 1 focuses on some of the key ethical behaviours and professional conduct that salespeople need to be aware of and deal with in their everyday business in order to avoid violating an obligation or regulation under the Real Estate and Business Brokers Act and its Code of Ethics; Module 2 discusses the privacy legislation and the 10 principles of privacy; and Module 3 examines the important principle of staying out of trouble through conscientious disclosure practices
 
Real life situations and case studies demonstrate the consequences of not protecting your reputation and how to stay out of trouble. For example, in the disclosure section, the following case describes a salesperson who did not understand the rules of disclosure to avoid violating fiduciary duties:
 
“Your obligations for full disclosure do not end once an agreement of purchase and sale is signed. They continue until a transaction is completed. In one particular case the salesperson did not disclose to her seller client, once an offer was signed, that she had been contacted by a different buyer who was willing to pay more for the property. The salesperson did not bring this information to the seller, and instead acted on the sale of the property from the initial buyer to the new buyer. Not only did this salesperson forfeit her commission on the first transaction, she also had to pay to the seller the commission that she earned on the resale as well. All of this could have been avoided if the salesperson had brought this to the attention of the seller in the first place and just obtained permission to act on the resale transaction.”
 
Here are more tips from the course:

  • Don’t include anything in an advertisement or marketing material that would in any way reveal the price or terms of the sale/rental of a property unless all the parties to the sale/rental have given you permission in writing.
  • Do not give advice outside your area of expertise, such as landlord-tenant rights.
  • Confirm all client instructions in writing.

For more about the course, including schedules and locations, visit http://www.oreacollege.com/.

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For more information contact

Ontario Real Estate Association

Jean-Adrien Delicano

Manager, Media Relations

JeanAdrienD@orea.com

416-445-9910 ext. 246

Ontario Real Estate Association
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The trademarks REALTOR®, REALTORS®, and the REALTOR® logo are controlled by The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and identify real estate professionals who are members of CREA. The trademarks MLS®, Multiple Listing Service® and the associated logos are owned by The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and identify the quality of services provided by real estate professionals who are members of CREA. Used under license.

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