But Is It Ethical?

Tonight it was my privilege to sit around the big conference table in the Boardroom at the Real Estate Board of New York with 30 of the industry’s top professionals leading a conversation on ethics. I was impressed as I so often am when I teach at REBNY or elsewhere by the extremely high standards these agents set for themselves. Our business, like most businesses, isn’t black and white. But, in the wake of the excesses of the last few years on Wall Street, top agents in our business seem more concerned than ever about doing the right thing.

What, for example, do you do when a seller has accepted an offer, given a handshake as it were, but then receives a higher offer? Should that seller feel bound to stick with his deal? If you think the answer is yes, is it your obligation to tell him so? How hard should you push? Is the seller aware that often the higher offer disappears, but in the meantime he has alienated his original buyer so he ends up with nothing? And it is the broker, not the seller, whose reputation suffers when that takes place! 

Or how are we supposed to deal with the tension between fair housing guidelines and legitimate questions that our buyers ask us? At Warburg we now refer to “family” as “the F word” because we are not allowed to utter it when we are out with customers. If they ask “Are there a lot of children in the building?” we are not allowed to answer. If they want to know if a co-op has a demanding Board we are not allowed to answer. So how do we help our customers make informed decisions while making sure we do not break the law?

The goal of a class like this is not so much to provide answers (most ethical dilemmas do not have clear answers, otherwise they would not be dilemmas!) as to create a forum for open discussion and inquiry. And for three hours tonight I was proud, as I so often am, to be leading this discussion and to be a part of this industry.