Liar Liar!
By Jim Palmer Jr.

Some years ago, the silly slap stick actor, Jim Carrey did a movie called Liar, Liar.  Somehow the main character’s son casts a spell so that his father cannot ever tell a lie.  This dilemma causes some hilarious situations in which the attorney-father tries (unsuccessfully) to cheat the curse by not telling the whole truth, instead of committing a bold faced lie.  There are some deceitful players like that in the real estate industry that have surfaced recently.  It seems like all the predators come to the water hole when it has water!

There is a dot.com company that advertises incessantly in radio ads that they can save you the hassle of picking out a real estate agent.  They claim that the brokers they refer are top notch and will sell your home much faster than the average agent and if that isn’t enough, they say their brokers can sell your home for an average of 8% more than the listed price.  They further claim that these brokers don’t pay to be listed on their website.

In dispute of these claims; First of all, this company has no legal access to any data that would allow them to know who sells homes faster than anyone else, since that data is controlled by the MLS.  Secondly, if a broker is consistently selling homes for more than the listed price, they probably need to go back to school to learn the art of appraisal, or maybe they should quit lying to their sellers and the public about the value of homes.  Shady brokers routinely use the strategy of under pricing homes in a frenzied market, in order to create bidding wars.  Lastly, the referred brokers DO have to pay to be on their website.  While it is true they don’t pay the company upfront to be listed as such a hot rod agent, they do always have to pay a fee to the company if a sale closes that was referred to them.

Another company that employs dubious snare tactics offers a 1% listing fee on all their yard signs, when the truth really is that the fee to the seller is 4 times that amount.  They don’t tell you that as the seller you will also be asked to pay a much larger portion than they are receiving to the broker who brings the buyer.  They just don’t call that portion the listing fee.   Sneaky, huh?  I like to call it what it is,…liar, liar!