"I'll give you $5,000 cash if you tell me what the highest offer is, and we will beat it." 

Let me back up a bit. I want to first start off by saying this situation did not happen to me, but rather a friend/colleague of mine. I am taking this story from him, ala when Peterman bought Kramer's stories in Seinfeld. I did not however pay him for this, which brings me to my next point. In this crazy crazy white-hot Real Estate market, information is valuable....and recently I found out how valuable, $5,000. So here is the scoop, my colleague lists a home for sale in Coquitlam, gets 200000 people thru the open house (that may be an exaggeration, it was probably 150,000). 6 or 7 Realtors confirm they will be writing an offer the next night its set for 7pm. One of the Realtors calls the next day and says "Hey Mr Listing Agent (not his real last name), if you tell me what the highest offer is so we can beat it, I will pay you $5,000 cash under the table. I can tell you that my colleague works for a very successful and reputable team that would never in a million years entertain that idea, and the Realtor quickly got shut down, and there may be a complaint filed, I'll leave that with them. When he told me the story, the first thing I thought was......if this agent is asking you to do this, I am sure it's not his first time.....I am sure he has done it before and listing agents have agreed. Now let me list some of the 'laws' that us agents must adhere to, and you can decide if any one of them was broken.

- act honestly
- act in an impartial, objective manner
- avoid all conflicts of interest
- not make secret profit

Those are just a few of the rules, pretty sure this buyers agent broke a lot more than them. How would you feel if you were a buyer, trying to buy a home in this market, where literally 95% of homes are selling for over asking price in competing situations, and this happens. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, the dirty realtor gets the offer accepted. This has to stop, and guys like this need to be tossed out of the business forever, with their licenses revoked forever.

Something else similarly happened to me a few years ago, but this situation, the agent was actually not 'technically' breaking any rules.....technically. I get a phone call from a friend of mines sister saying she wants to write an offer on a foreclosure, and her current agent said he could do it, but he was also writing another offer on the same property with a different client. Is this allowed? "technically" yes...... but 1) it should not be 2) even if all the proper paperwork is filled out, its nearly impossible to execute this and not break any rules. I personally would never even attempt to try it, and would refer whoever contacted me last, to a good agent in my office. So I explain to her that in a foreclosure deal, you have 1 shot. You write 1 offer, and put it in an envelope, and submit it to a judge. So basically, your 'agent' (I use that term loosely) knows before he even shows up to court that day, that one of his clients has no chance. How would you feel if this agent is representing you and his cousin. He comes to see you first at 7pm to write the offer and you write $525,000. He meets his cousin at 8pm and his cousin says "I think I want to write $522,000...what do you think?" What do you think the agent does? Is he representing either party professionally?

The agents that worry about THEIR pockets before their clients, need to get weeded out, plain and simple.

PL