Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.
In this episode Chris attempts to answer an important question: Can real estate agents ethically represent both parties in a real estate transaction? Chris takes time to present and discuss the potential upsides and drawbacks of dual agency. Chris mentions scenarios when dual agency might make sense, and also where it can become problematic. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a better understanding about whether you should or should not engage is this controversial practice.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping a real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show, and today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lynn sell from the closed.com. This is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes.com. And let me tell you about the clothes. The clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals, they cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies. From the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level, please visit the clothes.com That’s th e c l o s e the clothes.com and subscribe to their newsletters so you can be notified every time they publish an article and with us as always is crystallin Sal now he is a staff writer and real estate coach for the close. Now Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s licensed agent in the state of Michigan and Chris has been part of hundreds of real estate transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on stage, although maybe not as maybe virtually at the moment for his local community theater production, although we are always excited, but Chris did just have a big project. So what you see behind him is his newest DIY project for shelving. But Chris, welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re excited to have you.
Chris Linsell 2:23
Yeah, thanks, TJ. Yeah, I’m standing in front of my brand new video background. You know, I’m not very handy with hammers and nails, but I can figure out how to put, you know, some stuff on the wall. So so here we are.
D.J. Paris 2:36
For our for our listeners, you’ll have to just click on the video to see this. But for our viewers, you’ll see it it really does look like a virtual background because it is so sort of perfectly done. I said to Chris, I was like, Oh, where’d you get the virtual background? He’s like, Oh, no, I made that. So. So well done. Thanks. So today, we’re talking dual agency. Yeah. Let’s talk about it. Go ahead. I know you don’t
Chris Linsell 2:59
like thoughts about it. Well, you know, where to where to begin, I guess I’ll put it to you this but we’ll kick things off by just saying I mentioned a couple of things. And not controversial things like pretty normal run of the mill things about dual agency on Twitter and on LinkedIn. And I literally, I was getting direct messages until like three in the morning people with very strong viewpoints on this topic. And I you know, I’ve always in Michigan dual agency is legal and and it’s been something even as a young agent, I didn’t totally understand other than the fact that you could double dip a transaction and earn twice the money on it. And so it kind of seemed like a bingo moment to me like maybe I should just be doing nothing but dual agency. But you know, the amount of money right? For insofern really not twice the amount of work let’s let’s just call a spade a spade here. So, you know, dual agency is is a hot topic in real estate. And I’m actually working on a long form piece about about dual agency for the close right now. I’m sure that’s going to ruffle some feathers, which I’m looking forward to and love to talk about it with you. Let’s let’s dig into it. Let’s let’s get into the nitty gritty on it.
D.J. Paris 4:19
So yeah, and we should also talk about we have a nationwide audience. So where are you Where You Live may allow dual agency it might not I know here in Illinois, it is technically allowed as as in Michigan, we’re Chris’s however, we keep hearing rumblings although we’ve been hearing them for at least here in Illinois for at least 10 years of people saying you know it’s going away it’ll eventually not be an option. As of right now it still is we have 700 brokers at our company. Our official policy at our firm is resort a really we’re okay you know we allow it but we sort of get very nervous about it as a brokerage Should we encourage our agents to explore other ways to service the client or clients? Because it just puts it makes us very nervous.
Chris Linsell 5:10
Yeah. And And honestly, yeah, honestly, like, like, reasonably so and and yeah, the big, you know, I’ll say reasonably so maybe even appropriately so is that in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas and Vermont, dual agency is illegal, it’s been banned. And I don’t mean like, discouraged by the state associations, like there’s a law, somebody voted on a law that said dual agency is not allowed. And I can tell you through research for this piece I’m doing for the close, I can tell you, out of those eight states where it’s illegal, five of those states, the laws came into place as a result of repeated litigation against real estate agents and brokerages. Because buyer’s or seller’s felt as if those agents were not fulfilling their contractual duties to them as a result of representing both parties. So this isn’t this isn’t like a dandelion in the front yard kind of decision, these decisions are being made as a result of litigation, and significant financial penalties for breach of contract by the, you know, or alleged breach of contract. So, you know, this is this is definitely something that is a serious issue and is worth talking about.
D.J. Paris 6:33
And also, yeah, thanks. You’re absolutely right. And the also, I remember when I was in real estate school, they were talking about this years ago, was that, you know, even though if you do a dual agency transaction, you know, years down the road, one of the parties could still look back at the transaction. Now, I imagine there’s a certain amount of time they would have to do this, but there is, from my understanding, there are there are years in to be able to then say, you know, I know that I’m thinking about it, you know, my agent represented both sides, and I don’t feel so good about that anymore. And I want to maybe explore a legal action or, you know, at least creating an issue for that agents licensing, maybe submitting something to the state board about feeling that that wasn’t maybe the most professional solution for them. So obviously, there’s a lot of and then there are other people who are brokers who are agents who absolutely love doing dual agency and they will defend it, they don’t see it as a problem. So you’re right, it’s very, very hot button. Should we talk about maybe the arguments for and against or?
Chris Linsell 7:42
Yeah, that sounds great. That sounds great. So I’ll just give you a really quick like a quick hit list of the classic reasons why people support dual agency and up full disclosure here. I had been a dual agent before I am not you know, calling from my high horse for something that I haven’t I haven’t investigated personally. So here’s here’s some of the benefits that that I know and that you know, through through kind of the industry that workout so first of all, there’s a possible cost saving for sellers when you are a dual agent and here’s what I mean by that in in my experience, it’s pretty common. In fact, I’ve got it in my listing my boilerplate listing contracts when it comes to commissions I’ll identify the commission I’ll say commission for this sale will be 6% Unless the selling agent may brings the buyer for the property in which case the list of the Commission for this sale total commission will be four and a half percent so that one and a half percent savings occurs as a result of double signing and I build it right into my my listing contract because it is frequently an objection that comes up when I’m having listing appointments so I answered that objection early. So possible cost savings for sellers that’s that’s the first potential upside. The next upside is potentially faster and more efficient communication. I don’t know about you. I’ve dealt with real estate agents who really literally could not use their phone they will I don’t know I don’t know how to use this thing. I don’t know the text I didn’t even know I got text messages. That is not I’m not making that up. That is a real thing.
D.J. Paris 9:33
And or even worse, like the voicemails fall and you get something Yeah,
Chris Linsell 9:38
voicemail for I want to I want to throw my own phone out the window I hear somebody else’s voicemail is full message. So when you have one agent dealing with the entire transaction, communication is a little bit easier. You have a hub for communication rather than, you know, two cans at the end of a string. So that’s there’s another one on the same vein is your organization of paperwork of showings of closings, you know, on all of these things where you have to get people together on, you essentially have four parties that you have to coordinate, you have to coordinate the buyer, the seller, the buyer’s agent, and the sellers agent. And if not everybody can get together, then you get frustrating, you know, frustrating scenarios here with one less agent in the mix, potentially things could be a little bit smoother, a little bit easier to deal with. Sure. So that’s, that’s another upside. And then the last upside, and let’s just call a spade a spade here. There’s a possible increase in commission for agents. I mean, as a listing agent, I, of course, I want to make one and a half or two times what the commission would typically be for me on the so there’s a financial benefit for me in this scenario. And so, you know, those are those are easy benefits to dual agency.
D.J. Paris 10:57
And I’ll even add an additional benefit that is related to the one of the ones you mentioned, which was cost savings, to the seller. It also to a savvy buyer, let’s say there’s an agent who isn’t offering a cost savings to the seller, and says, you know, to the to the to the dual agent, hey, I’m happy to have you as as my my agent, and I know, you represent the seller, I would like a reduction in the overall fee. So that’s something that any party could ask for as well, which was also possible savings.
Chris Linsell 11:30
Yeah, yeah. 100% 100%. So these and, you know, I’m sure that there are others, you know, smaller ones, market specific ones, not going to get into all that right now. But there are some, like, theoretical top line benefits to dual agency. So let’s just call that out and make it clear, recognized. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s a part of the conversation here. But there’s definitely some drawbacks, right. There are definitely like, and we’ll just start with the big one here, there’s an inherent inherent conflict of interest, when you are representing both sides of a real estate transaction, as a as a appointed fiduciary, for your client, your primary mission in your in your job is to represent the best interests of your client. And as a seller’s agent, the best interest of your client centers around getting the most money possible for their property. And as the, as the fiduciary for the buyer, the best interest centers around getting the least amount of money, you know, to agree to a contract. So how can that happen, there’s a conflict of interest here, you can’t, you can’t be representing or you can’t be essentially, coaching two different teams, you know, in the same game and saying, Well, I want both teams to win, right now, one team is going to win and one team is going to lose. And that’s maybe a poor analogy, because ultimately, the best real estate transactions are where everybody feels like they’re a winner. But you really can’t, especially when it comes to price you really have it’s really rare that you can can say with confidence, I am representing the best interests of both sides of this transaction simultaneously.
D.J. Paris 13:21
Especially, especially if there’s negotiation, right, there’s not always negotiation, of course, which probably makes dual agency a bit more appealing or a little bit more easier to navigate ethically. But when there’s negotiation, it’s sort of like your as the agent as the dual agent, you’re sort of negotiating with yourself.
Chris Linsell 13:39
Yeah, 100% 100%. And actually, that that kind of leads into the other two kind of major drawbacks to dual agency, which is you have the you have less ability to advise your sellers and your buyers. And what I mean by that is go back to that game analogy. When you’re when you’re just a buyer’s agent or just a seller’s agent, you are like the coach for your team. But when you become a dual agent, you’re more like the referee of the game at that point. And you you can do much less as far as advising your clients because another tenant of successful real estate, a successful real estate professional is you’re holding confidential information, confidential. And so you can’t advise your clients using information that you’ve gained from the other party without violating that confidentiality. And this is what makes the last point negotiations more difficult. If you know, for instance, if you know, if you’re a seller’s agent, and you know that your client got a job transfer and they got to be out of town in 60 days, you know that that client is going to be motivated and would potentially accept a lower than asking price offer, but you can’t tell that to your buyer. Because this is kind of Financial, you can’t, and you can’t do it with a wink and a nod either. That is the sort of thing as specifically, I remember reading, specifically in the state of Maryland and Oklahoma, that specific instance, where a seller felt like their confidential information was communicated non verbally. And this held up in court, it was literally it was literally, my agent, use the wink and nod communication style, to communicate to the buyer’s agent in order to grease the wheels to get a contract done. And that is the sort of thing that is not only is it a detriment to everybody involved, including the real estate professional, because you’re gonna get sued, and you’re gonna potentially lose your license. But the buyers and the sellers are, are going to be losers as well. Because you better believe even if you’re the buyer, and you’re the recipient of that wink and a nod and all of a sudden, you’re like, oh, yeah, I got some insider info. You’re fooling yourself, if you don’t think that your agent is also giving course ads to the other side here.
D.J. Paris 16:04
Yeah, that’s a really, really strong point. So that the negotiation part of it is is problematic at at maybe the that’s maybe the lightest way to say it, it’s problematic.
Chris Linsell 16:16
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, keeping all holding all of those things equal here, dual agency is possible. I think, theoretically, on paper, it’s possible to do ethically and legally, it’s just a really fine line to walk. And it’s a really specific set of circumstances where that becomes unacceptable. And, you know, really a, you know, an unimpeachably moral and ethical process. So, you know, I’m not going to spoil the soup or anything, it’s pretty clear where, you know, kind of where I fall on this. But, you know, you’ll find out when, if you read, the article is gonna come out on the close in a couple of weeks here, you’re gonna find out like, I’m a supporter of legal, ethical real estate, and if that includes dual agency, great if you can do it that way. But I am calling on real estate agents. And I’ll just do it right here, you get the world premiere of this call. I’m calling on real estate agents to set the bar so incredibly high for themselves and for their market, that dual agency should become a rare thing.
D.J. Paris 17:25
Yep. Yeah, it’s I was, while you were explaining this, I was trying to think of examples that maybe fall into the ethical dual agency category, or unimpeachable, as you mentioned. And, and I thought, Okay, well, if it was a scenario where two parties had already agreed upon a price, before you sort of entered the transaction, and maybe they’re related, maybe their friends may, you know, it’s, Hey, I’m selling this to my buddy or my, you know, my son or my daughter. And there isn’t going to be back and forth negotiation. Like I know, when people this is a sad example, when people get divorced, oftentimes, they’ll they’ll use a mediator first. Instead of both hiring attorneys, they come to an agreement, then they both go to an attorney and say, Is this fair for both of us? The attorney says, yeah, and then can they can knock it out without, you know, without the negotiation process of back and forth. But I suspect that would seem to be a, a potentially reasonable option. But are there other scenarios that you can think of where it’s, yeah,
Chris Linsell 18:31
well, here’s one off the top my head. I don’t know if you remember this. But for a while. Zillow offered an option on their website called make me move. And essentially, homeowners would go to Zillow, and they’re like, I don’t want to sell my house. But if somebody offered me like the right amount of money, I’d consider it. Zillow got a little in a little hot water for for that particular feature and how it was being used by real estate professionals, which is another story for another day. But essentially, this is not an uncommon conversation that real estate agents have with their sphere of influence. In fact, if you’re being thoughtful and proactive about maintaining a relationship with your sphere, you are having conversations on the regular with property owners that you know and that that know you and trust you and you’re having conversations like hey, you know the market is doing X, Y and Z right now, it means that your house is probably worth a b and c you know, as as your real estate agent, and you can call yourself their real estate agent even when they’re not theirs. That’s a little that’s a little repeat customer retention tip for everybody there. Always call yourself your past clients real estate agent no matter what their their place in the funnel is, even if they just bought got their house 18 months ago and have no intention of moving for 20 years, call yourself the real estate agent, that you will, they will start to think of you like their doctor, their lawyer, their accountant, their real estate agent, you just get into that zone. So you should be having conversations with the people in your sphere on the regular about the market, about their property about their investment, call it their investment, people love hearing how much money their investment is making. And if you if you’re having that conversation, you are going to inevitably, there’s going to be a response eventually that said, Wow, you think I can get ABC from my house, if you could bring me a buyer that would offer me ABC for my house, I consider selling. This is an instance where you have a seller who has said, I don’t want to put my house on the market. But if there was a buyer who was ever interested in this, I would consider at this price, I would consider it and so all of a sudden, and you know, we’re getting into pocket listings a little bit here. But essentially, what you’re doing here is you’ve got a potential seller. And if you have a buyer you’re working with let’s say that buyers looking for the that exact house, and there’s nothing on the market and you say, Well, wait a minute, I got you know, Mr. Jones’s house, he said, If anyone would bring him the right amount of money he would consider selling, this would be a chance where, you know, we’ve got a buyer and a seller who wouldn’t be able to get together without dual agency, I think that there is a clear case to be made that you are serving the interests of both parties by bringing them together and representing both sides.
D.J. Paris 21:41
Yeah, that’s very interesting. What happens if the seller at that point says, hey, now that we got somebody that wants to purchase at this prop this price? I said, What if we tried to get some more money out of it, you know? Yeah. And then you go ahead. And let’s just say that, then you run into the same negotiation potential issue. But you can still pass information, you just can’t pass confidential information. Yeah. So you, you know, you’re not really able to counsel the client based on the other party’s answers. And I just think, Boy, that’s, that’s a tricky thing for any human to be able to do. Because we are not, you know, objective, fully objective creatures, we have subjectivity, we’re a we have we’re influenced. And I think it would be if any sort of negotiation process would be very difficult to to walk that that razor thin line of being unethical, even unintentionally unethical, I don’t think it’s always an intentional thing. I don’t think most agents probably who do dual agency or even thinking of it as in any way unethical, but being able to actually walk that line is Boy, that’s challenging.
Chris Linsell 22:58
Well, to put that to really put a cherry on top in the state of Texas, there was a lawsuit, it was unsuccessful. But I read, I read the case file on it, there was a lawsuit that a seller brought against their listing agent that they were they were unreasonably favoring the offers of buyers that were brought to the table by the listing agent, simply by virtue of there was an open house at the seller’s property. This was a really hot neighborhood, they got like six offers as a result of just this open house. And when the listing agent brought the offers to the seller, all of the offers that he hit that buyers he was representing, which is to he put those on top on top. Yeah. And the seller interpreted that as you should favor these offers, or maybe they interpreted it, you know, kind of after the fact once they kind of you know, we’re thinking it through that lawsuit was ultimately unsex unsuccessful, there was no finding for the plaintiff there. But this is an example of how dual agency can be sticky and ultimately why real estate agents, you need to set the bar so high for yourself, because the last thing you want is to get involved in an ethics committee hearing with your local with your local board, the last thing you want is to be, you know, brought into civil court and sued for your commission plus damages as a result of unfair representation. And that’s just that is an experience that nobody wants. And honestly, there’s a really easy solution to this, which is if you have if you’re a seller’s agent, and there’s somebody who comes to the table as a legitimate buyer. Refer to that person. Send that person to somebody else who can represent them and take a referral fee, for sure. That way, you still get a portion of the commission, you know, you still get 25% of that by side with literally none of the work at that point, you get none of the work and none of the liability.
D.J. Paris 25:17
Yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s such a great, great point, yes, you give up some of the, the chunk of the the buyer side, commission or or seller side commission, depending on what side. But boy, you’ll sleep better at night. And you know, I was just while you were telling this, I was thinking this, I was mentioning the divorce example. And I don’t, it popped in my head, and I kind of didn’t realize why it popped into my head. And I realized I have a friend who is actually going through a divorce process. And he was married for 30 plus years. So he and his wife, it’s a very amicable divorce. And so I me, myself, and some friends were chatting with him about this and, and his wife is a lovely person, and they are splitting and not fighting through the divorce. But when they when when he first said, you know, we’re going to share an attorney and we’re going to use a mediator are all of our first thought was, hey, we really like your wife. And this is not in any way. Condemnation of her character. She’s awesome. We love you, you guys are both awesome. But just to protect yourself, you should probably have your own. And he said, Nope, we already agreed on everything. We’ve got everything good word. And so he had to sell us on something that he had already done. And he’s going to do that right, and it’s going likely going to be fine. But imagine that same scenario. Now, with respect to dual agency, somebody’s talking, Hey, I just my agent helped represent the seller and the buyer. A lot of just just people are going to have a negative response to that, like, hey, wait a minute, you know, people who are familiar with it might say, you know, you may want to think, you know, and you just don’t want from a reputation perspective, whether it’s ever an ethics, you know, an ethics hearing about about this particular transaction. And, you know, whether you did the right thing or not, is yes, obviously important. But even just for your reputation, it might be something to really think about, because I know, like I said with with our friend, when he said he’s going to use one attorney are all several of us in the group had been divorced before. Also with amicable divorces. We said, no, no, you need to get your own attorney. And so again, it just becomes problematic. And again, that can continue on after the sale indefinitely, really. And that is something that you’d have to then defend, whether it’s legally or just for your reputation. And I think that would be a difficult conversation to have. Yeah, 100%.
Chris Linsell 27:30
And, you know, it’s important also to remember here, that as, as, as virtuous as the intentions are of the real estate agent who is attempting dual agency, there are going to be some natural pitfalls that will put you in jeopardy of making a bad decision that are totally outside of your conscious control. And one example of this is it’s actually an example by a University of Chicago guy, Steve, Steve Levitt, and Stephen Dubner, who are the Freakonomics podcast, guys and books. They talk about the real estate commission paradox, which is a I remember reading this in there. Yeah, yeah. So like, as a real estate agent, your commission, you know, if you sell a house for $100,000, and you get your 3% seller’s commission on that, you’re making $3,000 GCI on that, right? If you sell the house for $110,000, your commission only goes up by $300. Not very much in the grand scheme of things. But for the seller, a $10,000 difference could mean the difference between getting the their next house being their dream house or the next house being one they have to settle for. And so as a real estate agent, there is from a from a motivations perspective, you have a relatively low financial motivation to do anything outside of satisfy the basic needs of your buyers, sellers. And so like just by default, when you double the commission opportunity, your subconscious motivation is changes. And yeah, it goes even lower to negotiate strenuously for both parties, because you’re realizing like, as long as we get to a price that
D.J. Paris 29:33
both I’m going to win as long as both we get to a price. That’s exactly
Chris Linsell 29:37
right. That’s exactly right. Because ultimately, what comes down to it for double agency is, I’m going to win as long as you both don’t just walk away. Right? And that should never be the mindset for a real estate professional. Your mindset should not be, I win as long as you are just kind of satisfied Liddell, your, your mindset should be i When, when you get the best deal possible out of this. And, man, I just, there just are so so few instances where you as a single professional could get the best deal possible for both clients, it’s just there just doesn’t make those those circumstances just are so few and far between, save yourself the hassle, make a referral, get some money on the referral, and and move on. You know, don’t don’t don’t waste your time trying to figure out why dual agency works because honestly, academically it does in practice. Maybe it doesn’t.
D.J. Paris 30:47
Yeah, it’s it’s funny, I remember reading that Freakonomics the argument to be made that what Chris was saying is, the upside of the agent is much smaller in, in as far as their commission, by you know, if they’re a dual agent, for example, you know, again, they just want to get to it’s not that they want to get to closing, it’s that it would be a natural instinct for anyone who’s trying to earn income to want to close a deal and earn income. And so if you’re dual agent, like Chris was saying, you, it’s not that you don’t want to do the best job for your clients. But you are naturally also inherently now motivated to get the deal closed, and trying to satisfy both clients at the same time is challenging. And what Chris is saying, even even for non dual agency scenarios, where you represent a buyer or seller, there is this inherent disparity between your commission and the amount of money that the is being outlaid by the seller or the buyer. And, and yes, it’s not really all that proportionate. And I wonder if even down the road, we might even start to see and what we have seen flat fee, for sure has been around for a long time. Well, I’m curious to see if there may even be more adoption of flat fee style deals where it may be it’s not, maybe it’s still kind of a percentage. That’s where the a flat fee number comes from. But maybe it’s a hey, I think that would be an interesting thing to say to a seller who say, let me explain to you why I don’t do a percentage and why I do a flat fee. And you can even use that argument then the levied argument about I don’t want to be I don’t want to not be motivated to get you the highest price. I’m going to do the best. But anyway. So I don’t know if you’ve seen that. I don’t know how common that is. I know there’s low end flat fee business. But for higher end brokers, I don’t know how it’s gonna be pretty uncommon at this point. Yeah, sure. So we’ll see that.
Chris Linsell 32:37
Yeah, that’s my experience, too. And honestly, I would love to in a future episode, let’s talk about alternative commissions model, because I think that is a fascinating topic, that is scaring the pants off of the established real estate professional. Because I was let’s let’s just I won’t good won’t dig into it too deep right now. But I mean, let’s just be honest here. The stalwarts of our industry have made a heck of a lot of money with a system that is based on percentages, and they’re the their big bread and butter comes from closing relatively small transactions, in terms of numbers of transactions that are really high value, and they make a lot of money on that. And the idea that that could get flipped, that you can your you are going more for volume of transactions and a lower dollar value is scaring a lot of people. But it’s, you know, we are in, you know, I’m calling this the Uber economy now where the disruption from inside industry is occurring. This is not an annual thing, it’s a daily thing. There are new disruptions that are happening to establish industries every single day. And we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t think that real estate, and our especially our commission structure isn’t ripe for that disruption, it’s going to happen eventually it’s going to be who’s going to get there first, which is what we’re going to you know, wait and see.
D.J. Paris 34:03
What a great place to wrap up what a fun conversation. So dual agency, you know, just everyone should really think long and hard about how comfortable they are with a talk to your managing broker, find out your company’s policies, talk to your state you paid dues to get access to your state, talk to your local association, your state association, say hey, what are the pitfalls? How can I do this ethically if I want to do this, or should I not do this in certain states, it’s not allowed at all and many states may be following suit. So just be smart. This is your business and whether or not you ever have any sort of complaint or ethics violation, your reputation is really important. And of course there are ways to do this to maintain your reputation but boy, it’s tricky so just use your best judgment and and you know, explore other alternatives like Chris said, referring it out. Yes, you won’t be receiving all of both sides of the commission, but you’re going to have a much you’re probably going to be able to sleep a little easier at night without But as much worry about your licensing and also unhappy clients. But Chris, I want everyone willing to think Chris, of course, when every one of our listeners and viewers to go visit the clothes.com, I am the biggest fan of the clothes.com, th e Cl O s e.com. They also have a member. So it’s a free site with amazing articles. They also have a membership section as well, which is incredibly inexpensive, and you get access to lots of their different trainings and tools and other content that is not available to the public. So check it out, there’s a free trial as well there. The clothes.com on behalf of the audience, Chris, we want to say thank you, as always, you’re amazing. We’re so happy to have this monthly chat with you. And on behalf of Chris and myself, we want to say thank you to our audience, please everyone tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from her hearing from this, this conversation about dual agency and send them a link. Chris is a thought leader. He has researched this and he’s going to have an article Chris, do we need a publication date for this article yet?
Chris Linsell 36:04
I don’t have an exact date. But I would say probably in the next couple of weeks. You’re gonna expect something and you know, it’s just in time for that, you know, end of the year, you know, New Year New you conversation. Are you going to be a dual agent and 2021 This is your time to decide.
D.J. Paris 36:23
I’m calling thanks. It’s funny. It’s a good point. I’m gonna I was joking with my team this morning. I’m gonna next year we’re going to call it New New Years same audio. But, but but actually but yeah, it’s something to really think about. So everyone, you know, thank you so much for listening, Chris. Thank you again. We’ll see you next month.
Chris Linsell 36:43
Can’t wait can’t wait. See you soon.
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