I am not going to spend to much time on this post because most MacroBusiness readers would already be aware of the issue. However, in case you don’t know one of my pet peeves is the liberties available to the Real Estate industry because their agents do not have to conform with the Australian Financial Services Licencing Act.
As I have said before:
Real estate is a sales business so I understand that some “flexibility” with the facts is justifiable. However, after just a few days training, agents can take so many liberties with the largest financial transaction the average Australian will ever make it leaves me incredulous.
But it gets worse, because in many cases it isn’t just the Real Estate Industry providing the “flexibility” in the facts.
And what do I mean by that?
It is well known that the print media and the real estate industry have financial partnerships; you wouldn’t get real estate lift-outs that are half the size of the Saturday paper if it wasn’t the case. I have no issue with this relationship per se, as long as it is clearly declared by the media outlets and their agents when they are producing content on behalf of the real estate industry. The problem is in many cases it is not. No doubt it is often simply sloppy reporting, but the occurrence is so widespread that it is difficult to not also conclude that some systemic corruption of standards is underway. Either way, it is a disgrace to both industries and an utter embarrassment to regulators for providing a legal framework that allows it to occur.
Back in April last year I put together a post providing a number of examples of the real estate industry employee’s being represented in Australian newspapers as first home buyers in order to make our readers aware of the issue. One of the agents I mentioned in that article was Lisa Vallely who happens to be an agent at Harcourts.
Here is the picture from the article with Ms Vallely sitting in front of the sign of her employer:
And here is what Ms Vallely had to say in the February 12th addition of the “Adelaide Now” in an article entitled “Making the first home a reality”:
Lisa Vallely, who bought a block of land late last year at Northgate to build her first home, says the great Australian dream is still achievable.
“You just have to look at what you can afford and prepare for the worst when budgeting for interest rates,” she says.
The issue I had with this article, like all the others, was that nowhere in the 545 words did the reporter bother to mention that Ms Vallely was a real estate agent connected with the project featured in the picture.
Since I wrote that article I have been made aware of quite a few other examples, like this one from just 10 days ago (associated agents here and here ).
Yesterday reader Ben left a comment making us aware of another very interesting example, this time from Western Australian. It is interesting because… well you may recognise the women in the picture.