The agency debacle. Who is responsible for the mess that exists in the real estate market of today?

I got a call yesterday that started: "I would like to check the availability of your listing at..."

The only problem was, it wasn't my listing. I immediately realized that the caller had found the property on one of my IDX website and assumed it was my listing.

I politely asked "Are you an agent?" The caller said "no" but that they had an agent that was helping them and that he was just checking availability for him. Now, since there was already a listing agent and a buyer's agent already involved, I simply asked the caller to please have their agent call me and I would give him the information that he needed.

About an hour later, the same individual called again and said that he was at the house with his agent and that they needed the lockbox code to get in the door. At this point I asked him to put his agent on the phone and that I would speak to him.

Instead, he said that he would have his agent call me back. The agent called in thirty minutes and said that he checked on the MLS and realized that it wasn't my listing and it had been withdrawn and wanted to know if I knew anything about the property because his buyer was "at the house."

At that point, my suspicions were verified. The buyer did NOT have an agent present with him, he was doing his searching on his own but had an agent ready to write a contract when he found a house.I told the agent politely that he was "on his own" and thought that would be that!

Not so, About thirty minutes later the buyer called me again. He was desperate to buy this house and wanted to know why I couldn't help him. I explained that he indicated that he had an agent and that his agent was responsible to help him.

Now this gentlemen who was polite, sincere, and earnest sounded confused. I wonder why. Buyer's agency has been around for over twenty years. Everyone understands that when you want to sell a house, you hire an agent. But buyers still ignore the protocol when it come to purchasing a house.

In my 25+ years in the business, I have only a handful of calls that started" "hello, we are considering buying a house and we are interviewing buyer's agent's" And yet I get calls like that all the time from sellers.

The is no one to blame for this debacle except the real estate community at large. We have failed to educate the public about the importance of agency, and have instead succumbed to the willy-nilly demands from potential buyers in hope of making a deal.

It is our responsibility to protect the consumer by properly representing them. Anything less is unacceptable.