Subject: Open Letter to Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Scott R. Jensen Date: Sun, 03 Mar 2002 12:05:55 -0600 From: Jay Reifert Organization: Excel-Exclusive Buyer Agency ---------------------------------------------------------------------- List Removal Instructions: Reply to this Message With "Remove" in the Subject Line or Body of the Message. Governmental Officials and Their Respective Staffs Will Not Be Removed From This List. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Open Letter to Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Scott R. Jensen ---------------------------------------------------------------------- March 3, 2002 Dear Speaker Jensen, As the leader of REAL-Reform, a group of Wisconsin citizens and Wisconsin real estate licensees who are dedicated to Real Estate Agency Law Reform in Wisconsin, it frequently falls upon my shoulders to shine a light into dark corners. As I have read several different biographies of your ascension to power in the Republican controlled Wisconsin Assembly, I am left to conclude that you are an intelligent and motivated politician. Unfortunately, you are also the sole Assembly sponsor of the second-most anti-consumer piece of real estate legislation ever to be considered for placement before a legislative committee, the Wisconsin Realtors Association's, WRA's, flawed, anti-consumer, large/mega brokerage house scheme known as Designated Agency. With all due respect Speaker Jensen...What are you thinking? As a politician who has positioned himself as a friend of the Wisconsin taxpayer, promoting how you are trying to help Wisconsin citizens keep more of their own money, how can you get behind a scheme like Designated Agency, which creates loophole after loophole for real estate licensees and their firms to abuse every Wisconsin home buyer and seller's pocketbooks? This concept which you've submitted to the Legislative Reference Bureau for drafting under the title LRB 4720, purports to create a framework where a Broker/Owner or Managing Broker of a real estate firm, can appoint one licensee in their firm to represent a buyer client of that firm and another licensee of that firm to represent a seller client, IN THE SAME TRANSACTION. Perhaps you are not aware, sir, but both the State of Wisconsin Real Estate Board and the Department of Regulation and Licensing have declined to support this concept, citing a need for further study. In fact, Attorney William A. Black has distributed a memorandum to the Department which is quite damning of the concept. You can view a copy of his comments by going to: http://www.real-reform.org/one-clear-voice.pdf To help you see even more clearly what a world with Designated Agency would be like, Speaker Jensen...please consider the impact of having a hypothetical law that would allow you to share campaign staff with Senator Charles Chvala. I seem to recall at the last Realtor and Government Day on January 24th of this year, that you were making it quite clear from the pulpit that were no friend of Mr. Chvala and his politics. While I am not addressing the stance that either of you take on issues, let's pretend for just one moment that you and he were in the same house of the legislature...the Assembly. Let's also presume that you were each up for re-election to the same seat and only one of the two of you could have that seat. Let me ask you, sir...how likely are you to avail yourself of the opportunity to share campaign staffs with Mr. Chvala? That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? Think of all the money it could save each of you. Certainly you wouldn't be concerned that this mutually shared staff might favor one of the two of you over the other, thus undermining one of your chances for election, would you? Certainly you wouldn't be concerned about not having the full loyalty of that firm to your cause, would you? Certainly you would not have any objection to this firm that you have hired working every bit as hard to get Mr. Chvala elected to the seat you desire as they will work for you, would you? Naturally, you don't have any objection to that campaign firm getting paid the same dollars to "represent" you and Mr. Chvala at the same time, as they would have been paid to represent you alone, do you? Speaker Jensen, that is exactly what Designated Agency is all about. One firm purporting to represent the BEST interests of two opposing parties in the same transaction. One firm who will not receive compensation unless the deal comes together. One firm who will retain twice as much money on the firm side, IF the deal comes together. Yet, this firm, which has the chance to gain a double payday, will supposedly put that UNDISCLOSED interest aside and negotiate hard for the BEST interests of each client in that transaction. It doesn't seem like such a good idea in that light, does it? Not only that...but to make matters even worse, the WRA has convinced you to include language that would allow the Broker/Owner or Managing Broker of the firm to appoint him or herself to be one of the Designated Agents in the transaction! Talk about a transparently blatant conflict of interest! Yet, even as transparent as this is, it is truly only one step removed from the usual--and equally flawed--version of Designated Agency where the broker appoints two of the licensees who owe loyalty to the firm and the firm's policies, to be a Designated Agent in the transaction. Speaker Jensen...I understand that you feel great loyalty to the Wisconsin Realtors Association. I was there when you told a packed house of Realtors--at Realtor and Government Day 2002--of how it was the Realtors who put you over the top in your very first election. I was there when you told us how, just minutes prior to the polls closing, you and a small group of people were still out campaigning...working to get voters to the polls. I was there when you told us that you won your first election by a mere thirty-eight votes. And I was there when you told us that the small group of people out campaigning for you, at the very end, were members of the Wisconsin Realtors Association. Speaker Jensen, I appreciate your loyalty to those who have helped you...but I feel it is crucial to remind you that you have a duty and obligation that supersedes your loyalty to a group of eleven thousand Realtors, most of whom do not even agree with Wisconsin Realtors Association on this issue. Your duty, sir, is to the Citizens of the State of Wisconsin and their right to have clear real estate laws that are designed to protect them...and not laws that benefit a minority of brokerage houses within a particular trade association, AT THE EXPENSE OF WISCONSIN CITIZENS. Yes, sir, the megabrokers who control the WRA are a clear MINORITY when it comes to both the number of offices that they have in WRA membership and the total number of individual practitioners who work for all firms in the State of Wisconsin. Sir, you are sponsoring legislation that is incapable of being corrected...as the basic premise of Designated Agency is not supportable. You can't expect a firm that has a doubled incentive to put a deal together, to act against its own best interests. Your office has received every correspondence ever sent by REAL-Reform about this issue, including the one that explains the final, yet first, bombshell fact: Wisconsin does not even have agency law as the framework for our real estate laws. Thanks to another act of duplicity and misdirection by the WRA in the early 1990's, Wisconsin passed the Agency "Reform" Act of 1994. By so doing, every licensee in the State of Wisconsin was silently changed into a facilitator, owing no meaningful duties to clients in a real estate transaction, yet those clients still are paying for agency-level services! (This, by the way, was the first-most anti-consumer piece of real estate legislation ever to come before the legislature. Unfortunately, it passed into law and will have to be undone in the future.) Adding Designated Agency over the top of the current (non)agency laws will not give home buying and selling consumers anything, except more confusion and deception. The legislation you have been manipulated by the Wisconsin Realtors Association into supporting has only one reason for existing: The desire of the large and mega-brokerage houses to position themselves to better sell their ability to "double-dip" a transaction as a benefit to unsuspecting consumers. If you take away the desire of these large firms to protect their ability to double-dip--get paid on the buyer side and seller side of a given transaction--what necessity remains for Designated Agency? The answer is, none. Speaker Jensen, for the sake of your political future, you should immediately pull your support for LRB 4720 and allow the Department of Regulation and Licensing the time to put together an impartial committee to study this concept from the consumer's side. You have seen that--in addition to the opposition of REAL-Reform for this scheme--the large and influential Consumer Federation of America and the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents have also come out in opposition to the flawed, anti-consumer concept of Designated Agency...especially as promoted by the Wisconsin Realtors Association. (Soon, even more consumer organizations will be joining our call for opposition.) Sir, the WRA stands alone on this issue and does not even have the full support of the majority of its members. Think of the citizens of the State of Wisconsin. Think of your own constituents. Think of your future. You are very close to awakening a slumbering consumer giant. Sincerely Yours, Jay Reifert, Organizer/Director of Operations REAL-Reform (Real Estate Agency Law-Reform) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Now would be a great time to contact your legislators to voice your opposition to LRB 4720...Designated Agency. You can find out how to contact your legislators to register your oppostion by going to: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/wamltest/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Also, PLEASE forward this message to everyone you can and please also print it out--and distribute--to those who you know that don't have email capabilities.] --------------------------------------------------------------------- [This message is going out to thousands of Wisconsin Realtors, almost 500 governmental officials--including all State Legislators and their respective staffs, the Governor of Wisconsin and most candidates for Governor of Wisconsin, the Attorney General of Wisconsin, over 425 Consumer Advocacy Groups and/or individual Consumer Advocates, over 285 Registered Wisconsin Lobbyists and over 190 Media Outlets.] -- Sincerely Yours, Jay Reifert, Organizer/Director of Operations REAL-Reform (Real Estate Agency Law-Reform) http://www.real-reform.org Jay Reifert, Broker/Owner*****************Excel-Exclusive Buyer Agency 100% Homebuyer Representation********5136 E. Hilltop Road 100% Of The Time****************************Madison, Wisconsin 53711 South Central Wisconsin's ONLY********(800)928-9379, Toll Free Full-Time Exclusive Buyer Agency Firm.***(608)273-8841, Office Visit http://www.true-agent.com ***********(608)273-8388, Fax Machine or mailto:true-agents@true-agent.com Check out our NEW website, at: http://www.Buy-Madison-Real-Estate.com