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The two least trusted groups in Britain… According to something I just watched on UK TV, in a survey the public ranked estate agents lower in terms of trustworthiness than any other professional group in Britain… except for politicians. The programme also discussed how increasing numbers of buyers and sellers were doing business via the internet in order to cut out estate agents altogether.
As part of the show’s segment dealing with this, some woman from Which? (a statist ‘consumer group’ which acts as a pro-regulation lobby) came on supporting the idea that the state should regulate estate agents, requiring them to be licenced… in other words she wants to trust the most un-trusted group in Britain to regulate the second most un-trusted group in Britain.
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“The government must take urgent action”
This really sums up the thinking of most middle of the road statists. I find it rather sad that Which?, a service that often improves the free market by providing consumers with information on their choices, should be going down the campaigning path have government ‘improve’ the choices available to consumers.
Gads! “Which?” is still around? Didn’t Richard Dimbleby do a television version of “Which?” in the 1950s?
Well, you see, the government, that is, politicians, regulates politicians and how they’re elected and that works out fine, right?
They must be operating on the old saw that says to: “set a crook to catch a crook.” Forgetting, of course, about the saw of two wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner.
The telly here in the US had a bit here the other night about the zillo.com(Link) real estate valuation website. I had the idea today that we need a similar website that allows people to look up their homes to find out what their government believes is “fair market value” of their home when the state decides to eminent domain the property.
I suggest a third group of ‘untrustworthies’…the general public….which has a peculiar ineptness in choosing its leaders.
Some people seem to be rather keen on believing whatever some other (untrustworthy) people have to say. I wouldn’t mind so much if they were the only ones to suffer for it.
permexpat: Watch it now, it is distrust of the general public (of course, by those who are more qualified to make our decisions for us) that statists justify the taking of liberty and property. That the public is so often deceived by politicians seeking office is a cause of why pols are bottom of the trustworthiness poll. It is only unfortunate that so many of us who choose to have a positive view of the world want so much to trust those who seek our trust that given the corruption of power, we will always be disappointed.
This is one reason why I suggest making breaking ones oath of office a capital crime. Piper’s Solution makes ever more sense to me as time goes on.
That the public is so often deceived… So often? How often is necessary? Is the general public a cuckold or merely complaisant?
Your RE agents/associates aren’t licensed????
Our are.
And you have to pass another test to become a broker/owner.
After watching Househunters International, there are a lot of differences. Our can rep buyers or sellers.
And you can bet who will be keenest of all on the regulation of estate agents. That’s right, estate agents – the big established ones.
Sandy P, buyers agents are rare here in the UK. They do exist, but nobody has to have one. They only really operate in the market of the money-rich, time-poor. It is highly legally dubious whether an agent could act for both buyer and seller, and most (even in an unrespectable profession) wouldn’t risk it. Lying, on the other hand, still appears to be commonplace, because the remedies for misrepresentation are in practice rather limited. You need to get estate agent’s promises in writing, and like all salesment they rely on lowball, and are highly averse to writing down the same things that they will put to you orally – or anything at all.
A commission of 3.5% in the UK market is regarded as extortionate, and most hover around the 1.5-2.0% level. Competition keeps them down. (That and the government sucking cash out of every deal in Stamp Duty Land Tax.) US realtors do not operate anywhere near that level. They don’t have to, because the market is closed to anyone who might break the cartel.
While buyers agents might be rare, try being a seller moving out of the area with a buyer who’s a local landlord buying multiple properties through the same estate agent and then take a guess as to whose favour the estate agent wants to curry.
Not that I think regulation is the answer, I’d rather see an increase in the US “for sale by owner” type of thing.
The internet makes the ‘problem’ of estate agents go away. Now about politicians…
hehehe
Expat sez: “So often? How often is necessary? Is the general public a cuckold or merely complaisant?”
Try perpetually hopeful. As a forward looking techno-optimist, I confess to the same weakness, and though today I would swear that I’m convinced that I’ll never trust NASA with humanity’s future in space again, more likely than not, a change of administrators could possibly change my mind. Say, if Burt Rutan became head of NASA, I’d be willing to give them another shot. That Rutan trusts Griffin, I’m half willing to believe, or it may just be Rutan schmoozing him for launch contracts…
There is always someone that the public is willing to put their trust in, and such persons are often quickly sought to run for public office once they’ve earned that trust. The one’s you can really trust refuse such overtures (Colin Powell, maybe Condie Rice, Schwartzkopff, Warren Buffett, etc) out of principle or maybe just a sense they are too good for the job. Those who succumb to the imprecations tend to be those who aren’t strong enough to emerge from the office unscathed by corruption and other seductions of power.
I think what a lot of the public want is to not to have to think about things themselves. A while back I criticised a BBC article about estate agents. The article simultaneously attacked one estate agent that was trying to push prices up (which seems to me the main job of estate agents) and another that lowered prices to get quicker sales.
The implication was that property was being over- or under-valued. The article contained no suggestion that people are capable for deciding for themselves how much a piece of property is worth to them.
Of course, the author’s solution was more regulation, as if someone in a higher authority would know the true value of a house.
But that’s what many people seem to want: someone else to do their thinking, even if it means trusting people who really shouldn’t be trusted. Part of the reason has to be that people are so used to everything being regulated and safe that they’ve forgotten how to think for themselves.