The High Road: SmartMoney lauds, faults big brokers

Judy Phetteplace doesn’t share listings with other brokers in her upstate New York market.

Congratulations to SmartMoney for its balanced and extremely well-researched piece on what writer Alyssa Abkowitz terms “kingpin brokers,” of which I am hardly one.

In cities as far-ranging as Amsterdam, N.Y., Augusta, Ga. and suburban Cleveland, such brokers can have more than 100 listings and turn down new ones without a second thought.  Says the magazine:

Have a buyer’s agent and want to see a home listed by the market leader? Forget it,

The High Road: Broker says buyer must work with him

To put it as diplomatically as possible, the sumptuously decorated apartment that interested my client.

A buyer with whom I’ve been working for perhaps a year likes to search listings and attend open houses by himself. I’ll call him John.

That’s fine with me since I know John values my opinion, which he frequently solicits, and will want my help when he finds what he wants.

John called me a week and a half ago to say he was going to check on an alcove studio poles apart from a more expensive one-bedroom unit that appealed to him on the Upper West Side. Despite my admonitions,

Out and About: New law clarifies buyer representation

Note: After this post, Out and About will be published on Mondays or Tuesdays instead of the current Friday schedule.  Next one: Jan. 14.

 A new statutory requirement for real estate agents and associate brokers (licensees I customarily refer to merely as “brokers”) went into effect on Jan. 1, providing critically important additional protection to consumers and causing confusion, as well as consternation,  among the ranks of the untutored.

Enacted last year, the amendment to real property law modifies the agency disclosure form to allow advanced consent to dual agency and now adds a requirement for use of agency disclosure forms in real estate transactions for condominiums and cooperatives.  (You can download a PDF of the form.) The form lets you know who is representing whom, and it applies to both sales and rentals.

Fundamental to the form is an understanding of the difference