Would GARP Ever Work?

Generally Accepted Realtor Principles....hmmmmmm

I recently read a blog post from a realtor in the US. As a CPA (US equivalent to Chartered Accountant) he looks at one of the glaring issues in real estate today. The deficit of rules, guidelines and standardization for realtors to follow.

In accounting there are the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP. A standard set of rules and guidelines for everyone to follow. No questions of how a situation is handled. If you are not sure, you go to the GAAP and look it up. A great quote from the post is:

Ask any CPA any question, and their response should be, “Well, according to GAAP, Rule XYZ says that in that situation you must do 123.”

How is this handled in the traditional real estate world? Here is another snipit from the blog post:

let’s assume that you, as a licensed Realtor, receive multiple offers on a particular home you have listed. What do you do? What are your obligations, and to whom? Do you entertain both offers, or only one? Do you tell each agent that there is another offer? What if one of the offers is from an agent from your company? Does that impact your behavior in any way? What if one of the offers is from one of YOUR clients? How does that impact your actions?

Ask 10 agents, and you’ll get 10 different answers, I will surmise.

There are no clear, concise, precise, definitive instructions on this situation.

This lack of "regulation", in my opinion, is what separates real estate agents from what they think they are,highly trusted professionals, to what the public perceives them to be, on par with politicians, and car salespeople. Think Herb Tarlek from WKRP in Cincinnati.

If realtors had a GARP to follow they sure would weed out all the dead wood in the industry and the true professionals would be left standing in place with their head held high.

The other outcome of this would be with less realtors in the game the need for the high commissions would be gone as they would all get their fair share of the pie.

Do I ever think this would happen? When turkey's fly.


M