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Neil Jenman




Ethics and consumer protection in Real Estate in Australia .

He operated his own Real Estate Agency in Auburn , Sydney for 10
years and went on to give training courses and lectures and has written two
books. His ''Jenman Approved'' program for agents of demonstrably high
ethical standards has been taken up ( As Of 2005 ) by about 650 real estate agencies across
Australia (and some in New Zealand ).


Jenman's objections to the worst of conventional industry practices are
principally that agents act in their own interests, against the interests of
their clients, either through ignorance or greed. A brief selection of
problems he highlights,

  • Overquote the seller to get the listing (called "buying the listing").

  • Buyers underquoted to get interest, though it attracts people who cannot afford the ask.

  • Sellers negotiating position weakened by having their motivations revealed.

  • Sellers pressured into accepting less to make the sale, by a process known in the trade as "conditioning".

  • Auctions create the greatest pressure for conditioning, and are not liked by buyers either.

  • Auctions, by their nature, can only find the second-highest buyer's price.

  • Vendor bids or dummy bidding at auctions is dishonest.

  • City-wide advertising is a waste and serves the agent more than the client, through publishers' cash rebates to the agent.


Jenman gives numerous examples of people hurt by these practices. Some of the practices, like advertising and conditioning, have even been taught explicitly to agents in Real Estate Institute courses.

The law has slowly caught up with some of these matters. New laws in
Victoria and New South Wales requiring bidder registration have made
dummy bidding harder. ''Law puts heat on agents'' by Darren Gray, The Age newspaper, 1 May 2003 And an agent in Melbourne who grossly underquoted
to buyers was taken to court by the , 6 December 2003

The system of selling Jenman instead advocates is based on marketing only locally (since all buyers visit their area of interest), starting the sellers price high but guided by an independent professional valuation, identifying genuinely interested buyers, and having those buyers submit one price in a tender fashion. His idea is to put people into homes they both like and can afford, without stress for either buyer or seller.


REFERENCES



  • ''Real Estate Mistakes'', Neil Jenman, 2000, ISBN 0958651736.


  • ''Don't Sign Anything'', Neil Jenman, 2002, ISBN 0958651744.