The High Road: Agency disclosure law is ignored

State law has required real estate agents and brokers since the beginning of the year to let unaccompanied buyers know formally who is representing whom.

In particular, brokers holding open houses are to ask persons who visit to sign an agency disclosure form.  They must not only make the request, as I have written in the past, but they must verbally make clear where their loyalties lie.

In other words, brokers have a legal obligation to declare that it is the seller’s best interests they are bound to serve, not the buyer’s.

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,

The High Road: Where have all the brokers gone?

Where have all the flowers gone? At this time of year especially, you won't find any dogwoods blooming or many brokers previewing. (Flickr photo: Martin LaBar)

There was a tour of open houses for brokers on Tuesday, and I decided to have a look at properties in the 90s and low 100s. We are invited on such tours at least once a week.

I doubt that more than a handful of other brokers took advantage of the opportunity on a cold, windy day in late fall.  Certainly, I didn’t see more than two or three other names on any of the sign-up sheets in the apartments I visited.

I also checked out