DO YOU ASK YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT FOR FINANCIAL ADVICE?
December 10th, 2008 by admin
MEET YOUR REAL ESTATE SALESPERSON LICENSEE - YOUR FRIENDLY INVESTMENT ADVISOR???
LOTS OF TALK LATELY ABOUT THE RELATIVE INVESTMENT VALUE OF REAL ESTATE AND THE PRACTICE THEREOF BY REAL ESTATE SALESPERSONS OR BROKERS.
HAVE YOU DONE A JOB DESCRIPTION FOR YOURSELF LATELY? Are you a real estate salesperson or are you a real estate investment advisor? As an agent of your supervising broker, what does your license permit you to do?
Inspired by our fellow ActiveRain member William J Archambault Jr who proposes that real estate practitioners sell real estate as an investment, I disagree.
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. Government agencies, the National Association of Realtors, ActiveRain members, et al, believe that real estate agents should be selling real estate as an investment. I disagree.
RISK ASSESSMENT. Am I all alone in believing that providing real estate investment advice to home buyers is a high risk practice? Yes, I’m risk averse. Even from 2003-2005 when real estate was appreciating at a rate of about 20% a year, I provided buyer clients with information published by our local MLS provider. The consumer/buyer made their own analysis and determined the relative investment value of the real estate they were considering.
NO CRYSTAL BALLS WITH MY LICENSE. Unless a real estate agent or broker has control over the market, no real estate agent or broker can see into the future. We have experienced economists who can analyze data and provide pricing trends. Goodness, we have software programs that can take date we provide and return a projected gain or loss based on TRENDS. This is information available to the public.
DID YOU PREDICT THE REAL ESTATE RECESSION? How many of us who sold a lot of rel estate in the years 2002 when rates began to fall through mid 2005 when prices exceeded the average home buyer’s ability to buy beleived or even thought that we would see the real estate market crash as it has today??? I knew that list prices had gotten out of control. However, few of us had a clue to the perfidy practiced by Fannie Mae and the Wall Street crowds that were manipulating our market behind our very backs. Giving investment advice in 2005 based on the earlier several years for someone wanting to own a home for the next five years would have left a home buyer in a home in which they probably owed far more than the market value of their property. Sound familiar??
THE BIG QUESTION. Is the average residential real estate agent competent to provide investment advice to the average home buyer????
WE HAVE ENOUGH TO DO. I’m sticking to real estate brokerage and providing fiduciary to my buyer/seller clients based on their desire and need to purchase or sell real estate to be used as a HOME. My “investment advice” and I do not claim be be providing it, includes providing my buyer or seller clients with a Competitive Market Analysis for the purpose of determining relative market value of a subject residential property. In my opinion, exceeding that violates the COE and possibly license law.
I can sell a lot of real estate to be used for a HOME. Trying to sell real estate as an investment is above my pay grade.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Lovettsville New Home - 40 acres and mountain view, hor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
