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Ethics Q&A
The seller is gone but her stuff is still there; confidentiality of sales prices.
QIn a recent transaction, the seller failed to completely vacate the property at closing and funding. I attempted to locate the seller but could not find her. The next day, the buyers went to the property and found the door ajar and keys on a table in the living room.
I advised them to take the keys and lock the house, and I continued to attempt to locate the seller. After three days, I advised the buyers to move any remaining items belonging to the seller into a back room or the garage.
The following day, the seller returned and
was furious. She claims that I violated my responsibilities to her by allowing the buyers
access to the property.
Was I in violation?
ATexas Association of REALTORS® Director of Legal Affairs Ron Walker answers: “I am assuming: 1) you were the listing agent in the transaction; 2) ‘closing and funding’ was checked in paragraph 10 of the contract; 3) closing and funding occurred; and 4) the efforts you took to locate the seller were diligent efforts.
“Under the facts you presented, you did not provide the buyers with access, as they found the door open. With the foregoing assumptions, I believe any allegation of an ethical violation would be difficult to establish. The property was conveyed, the agency relationship ended, and the buyers were the owners of the property. The buyers, as the owners, have the right to enter and secure their own property.
“Of course, this answer may not be used in support of any position at a professional standards hearing, as it is simply a response to a general inquiry without hearing testimony from all participants.”
QI represent a buyer who is interested in several properties and wants me to find out what the owners paid to purchase these properties. I represented one of the owners when he bought his property, but the sales-price information is in the MLS. Can I tell my new client the price that my former client paid for the property?
AStandard of Practice 1-9 requires that REALTORS® preserve confidential information provided by clients in the course of the agency relationship after the termination of the relationship. But it seems clear that sales data provided to the MLS upon the sale of the property would not be considered confidential information protected under this obligation.
Publication of the sold data in the MLS would remove any possible confidentiality protection
that might be given to that information under
agency law.
A more difficult issue might be presented if the former sale was conducted outside of an MLS, and
no sales data was made available to parties outside the transaction. Under those circumstances, an argument could be made that the sales price might be entitled to confidentiality treatment by the buyer’s agent, and he should obtain the consent of the former client to release that information to the potential buyer.
Absent some confidentiality agreement between the buyer and seller and their agents in the former transaction, the sales data probably would not be considered to be protected confidential information, since it was known to the seller and his agent. Furthermore, Section 1101.804 of the Real Estate License Act specifically provides that a licensee shall not be liable to any other person for providing sales prices or terms-of-sale information for the purpose of facilitating the sale of real property unless the disclosure of that information is otherwise specifically prohibited by statute.
View the Code of Ethics in the Prof. Standards section of TexasRealtors.com.
Send questions about ethics to texasrealtor@texasrealtors.com. Not all questions received can be answered.
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