Carp ...
I’m afraid you’ve read too much into my dishonesty comment, and I don’t mean any disrespect in this response to you, so please don’t read too much into it either.
People IN GENERAL are not inherently dishonest ... but SOME people are. What am I basing that opinion on? 50 years of experience in the people business ... 100% commissioned sales. Here’s a good example:
Question to my seller: "How’s the roof ... any leaks?"
Seller’s answer: "Oh no, the roof is fine, we just had it tuned up."
Buyer moves in. First rain and I get the dreaded phone call ... "Hey Frank, my roof is leaking like a sieve. I went up into the attic and there’s a bunch of buckets up there trying to catch the leaks!!! I’m getting an attorney!!! I’m going to sue the SOB who sold me the house." Well, of course, the seller is now living across the country in Tennessee and will be impossible to collect from.
Or how about this one when I was newer and more naive? ... Seller has moved out and living in Northern California leaving me to market the house in Southern California:
Me: "Hey Joe, the city inspector says that the kitchen needs a new garbage disposal and the bathroom needs the electrical outlet to be upgraded."
My seller: Oh, crapolla. I won’t have any money until escrow closes."
Me: "No problem Joe, I’ll pay for the parts and the handyman. You can pay me back when escrow closes."
My seller: "You’re a real gem Frank. Thanks a lot. I’ll recommend you to all of my friends."
Close of escrow comes, the reimbursement money never comes. One phone call to the seller and the response was ... "well, why don’t you drive up here to Northern California and try to collect it, sucker!"
Here’s another one ...
Seller was an FBI agent. He freshly painted the living room downstairs to make the house more presentable. When he moved out, escrow was closed and we discovered that he had painted around the couch and was too damned lazy to move it and paint behind it. No matching paint could be found. The buyer had to repaint the entire living room.
Oh and then there’s the old trick of placing a throw rug on the carpet to hide the spaghetti sauce stain that won’t come out of the carpet ... and now a complete carpet replacement is required ... after the seller is moved an currently living who knows where?
Everyone of the above examples is the truth. I don’t know how long its been since the last time you’ve bought or sold a home, but this is the reason the files are about a foot thick these days ... made up mostly of disclosure statements. Those disclosures aren’t there to protect the pubic from the brokers .. they are there to protect the public from each other.
Put up with that over a 40 year real estate career and you soon learn that SOME people are dishonest. MOST people wouldn’t have lied about the roof, and MOST people would have reimbursed me for my out of pocket expenses that were used to fix their deferred maintenance. MOST people would have moved the couch and painted behind it, and MOST people don’t hide carpet stains under throw rugs. SOME do though.
Simple as that ...
Frank