Peter Pays Paul

Sometimes real estate professionals wonder why they have a bad reputation in the public opinion. Unfortunately, too often the bad reputation is cultivated by ourselves. Case in point, P. Wesley Foster Jr. of Long & Foster a Washington area real estate firm.

The Wasthington Post reports on November 5, 2007 that Mr. Foster chastised his employees for not sending business to the Long & Foster affiliate Prosperity Mortgage and instead funding loans through outside sources. His reason according to the Post “Neither of these companies do anything to support Long & Foster over its competitors, nor does SunTrust, Chevy Chase, or any of the other many lenders in your marketplace.”

At what point did this seem like a good public relations move? How does this best serve the interests of the client and not the company owned affiliate?

I spoke with a friend in the mortgage business. He heard from a title agent that some of the busiest mortgage brokers during this down-turn were the unscrupulous mortgage brokers that had put “A” paper clients into sub-prime loans because of the big lender fees. Now they were refinancing the same clients out of these bad loans into the loans that they would have qualified for in the first place.

When we think of our pocket-book over our duty to best serve clients, we engender the bad rap of real estate professionals. This is short-term thinking. Yes, we may get paid today, but those clients may never refer business to us. We have lost the potential for ten times the income through referrals and recommendations because we choose to put money before honesty.

Don’t be part of the problem. Put your clients first. You will sleep better at night.

Share on Twitter

Related Posts

• No related posts