You have spent months getting your blog in order. Making sure your lead generation system was working perfectly, thinking of and writing numerous blog posts per day, constantly tweaking your site so that it is a sleek SEO driven machine.Maybe you have spent thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign to get you the same result. You are now positioned as THE expert in your local real estate market.

Due to your marketing and promotional prowess, you receive a call from a prospective seller who wants your expert advice on a real estate subject. You answer the question relying upon your years of knowledge and experience. Then the conversation takes an alarming turn. The prospective buyer informs you that they already have their house listed with another agent and that agent has not been able to sell their property.

In addition to the property being listed, the questions you answered so skillfully just moments ago are now going to be used by the seller to prove that the current agent is wrong AND that they are completely incompetent. Remember, you are the expert so you have the right answers.

How do you handle this ethical conundrum? On one side you have a seller who is in desperate need of a real estate expert, on the other side you have an ethical obligation not to speak negatively about another agent.

To be honest my first reaction was to just answer each question from the seller openly and honestly and let the chips fall where they may. But after more reflection, I started thinking that by answering the questions from the seller, I was directly interfering with another agents client that they had a contractual relationship with. To me that is unethical.

Also add this into the mix when you are forming your replies. Every agent has had a listing with “uncooperative” sellers who will not take advice and then blame the agent for the property not selling. By only talking to the seller, we only get one side of the story.

This is a paradigm that I believe we will be seeing more and more often as real estate professionals become the local experts in their respective real estate markets.