From: Jay Reifert [true-agents@true-agent.com] Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 12:40 PM To: Oppose the WRA--Defeat Designated Agency Subject: Fair-Minded People Agree--The WRA Practices/Promotes Willful Deception --------------------------------- [Please Note: Those TEN of you who have requested to be unsubscribed from this alternative news/opinion source since receiving the Wis- CONsin (MegaBroker) Realtors Association "Designated Agency Update" will be unsubscribed immediately after this message has been sent. You received their deceptive message...you also deserve the chance to see how they are willfully distorting/omitting the facts.] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- List Removal Instructions: Reply to this Message With "Remove" in the Subject Line or Body of the Message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- As usual, 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Intelligent People Agree--The WRA Practices/Promotes Willful Deception ------------ -------------- "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." --Sir Walter Scott, Scottish Novelist and Poet What you are about to review should astound you. It should also make it clear to just what depths the Wisconsin Realtors Association is willing to descend to keep honest information from getting out about the anti-consumer, anti-realtor, fatally-flawed concept of Designated Agency. [Reminder: Designated Agency is the concept whereby the broker/owner or manager of a realty firm "designates" one licensee to represent the best interests of a seller client of the firm in direct opposition against a licensee that the broker/owner or manager "designates" to represent the best interests of a buyer client of the firm...in the SAME TRANSACTION. Miracle of all miracles...there is no longer any conflict of interest! The firm will now negotiate against itself and its against its own interest of seeing the transaction come together.] To see a graphic depiction of designated agency--and other forms of agency--at least in a state where not all licensees have been turned into facilitators, visit http://www.real-reform.org . The illustration of the money trail may help people understand how designated agency is in the firm's best interests and creates a conflict between the interests of the clients and the firm. Time now, however, to expose more of the deception of the Wisconsin Realtors Association. Although nothing can possibly top the deception that the Wisconsin Realtors Association pulled off with the Agency "Reform" Act of 1994...taking away the rights of seller and buyer clients to truly be represented in a transaction by making all Wisconsin licensees facilitators under the law, layering Designated Agency over the top of that misguided non-representation scheme comes in a close second. But...you already know all of that. Here are a number of deceptions perpetrated by the Wisconsin Realtors Association that you do not yet know. When you are finished reading these, ask yourself, do you consider the Wisconsin Realtors Association to be trustworthy when they tell you that they are on the side of the consumer? Aren't you perhaps curious about why they are trying--unsuccessfully, I might add--to shut me up? Deception #1: The WRA asserts that the Real Estate Board supports the concept of Designated Agency. ------------------------ On Wednesday, January 23, 2002 at about 8:30pm all of you on this list began receiving messages from Mr. Reifert. By 11:00am on the following morning--barely more than twelve hours later--the Wisconsin Realtors Association, WRA, released to all persons in attendance at the Realtor and Government Day at the Monona Terrace and Convention Center in Madison, and via email to every Realtor with email in the State of Wisconsin, a written response to Jay Reifert's Call to Action for Realtors to Oppose Designated Agency. In that piece, under the paragraph titled, "WRA Response to Designated Agency E-Mail", the WRA claimed that the State of Wisconsin, "...Real Estate Board support the concept of Designated Agency." According to information that Mr. Reifert received from Mr. Clete Hansen, Administrator of the Division of Board Services for the Department of Regulation and Licensing--the staff person who would know whether or not the Real Estate Board had issued support for the concept of Designated Agency, the WRA's assertion is untrue. In Mr. Hansen's response to Mr. Reifert, Mr. Hansen indicated that he reviewed the minutes of the Real Estate Board from January 1, 1999 to December 31, 2001. Designated Agency was not mentioned in the minutes at all during that time period and no vote or other show of support of the concept occurred during that time period. In other words, the statement by the WRA was either a bold-faced lie, or a deception of the grandest order, as it was meant to convey that there was support where none was given. (You can view a full copy of the WRA's statement and of the correspondence between Mr. Hansen and Mr. Reifert at: http://www.true-agent.com/wra_misleads_realtors_statewide.pdf ( http://www.adobe.com if you need the free Acrobat Reader. ) While it is arguably true that the Wisconsin Real Estate Board will eventually support the concept, since on this entity which is supposed to act as a counterbalance to the power of associations like the Wisconsin Realtors Association, four out of the seven members of the Real Estate Board, a clear majority, ARE REALTORS. Further, three of out of the four REALTOR members are mega-brokers who own multiple real estate offices and will be the direct beneficiaries of the deception afforded by Designated Agency if it becomes law. Of the remaining members of the Real Estate Board...those who are presumed to be on the consumer side, one of them winters in the Southwestern United States--and hence does not attend Board meetings--and the two others from the "consumer" side were appointed sometime in the month of January 2002, probably not even a full month ago! (And one of them is affiliated with WHEDA, the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority, which--as a lender of funds used by Realtors--is not exactly an entity that is likely to want to draw the ire of the WRA.) Consumers probably have ONE advocate on the Wisconsin Real Estate Board. So, even if all Board members would attend meetings, the Realtors will always have the majority necessary to pass whatever they wish to see passed. Nonetheless, the point still stands that the Wisconsin Real Estate Board has not (yet) voted to support the concept of Designated Agency and the WRA has purposely worked to create the false impression that the Board has. Deception #2: The WRA issues a Designated Agency Update full of deceptions about the concept which will be detailed and debunked in a different message...and then cites information from its website intended to create the impression that Mr. Reifert had misappropriated the WRA's freely accessible, downloadable database. ----------------- This morning--Monday, February 4, 2002--at about 10:15am, Attorney Rick Staff, General Counsel for the WRA and the primary architect of both the deceptive Agency "Reform" Act of 1994 and the equally flawed, deceptive--and hypocritical--proposed Designated Agency legislation, released an email under his name that purported that Mr. Reifert misappropriated the WRA Member Database for uses that were prohibited. Aside from the fact that Mr. Reifert is a member of the WRA and should have a right to communicate with members in any fashion that he sees fit, it is not only interesting, but instructive, to note that Attorney Staff quoted a version of the WRA Terms of Service which was revised and placed on the website on February 1, 2002, which was AFTER Mr. Reifert had already downloaded the database and begun using it on January 23, 2002. This version has been MARKEDLY changed, as to create the impression that Mr. Reifert had knowingly violated a rule which--even though the WRA couldn't enforce this new rule if they tried--was created specifically to cast doubt upon Mr. Reifert's character. (I wonder if Attorney Staff is familiar with the meaning of an Ex Post Facto law and just how Un-American and represhensible such an act is?) Well, you can view a copy of the version that existed PRIOR to February 1, 2002 by going to: http://www.true-agent.com/wra_misleads_realtors_statewide2.pdf Print them both out and pay special attention to the differences. It is extremely obvious that the revision was done in an effort to create the maximum amount of damage to Mr. Reifert's reputation that the WRA could. (Next time, Attorney Staff, perhaps you should point the barrel of your weapon away from your face before pulling the trigger.) Additionally, Attorney Staff has tried to assert that the names in the database are protected by copyright...something that--according to United States copyright law--is extremely unlikely, given the fact that there is nothing original or creative about a list of names. So, dear fellow Realtors and other interested parties, when you are trying to decide who to believe in this debate, remember that the WRA has now put their foot in their collective mouths TWICE in a way that is easily provable...and that they have already screwed every seller and buyer client in the State of Wisconsin by taking away every client's right to have a true agent looking out for them. Facilitators cannot represent anyone other than themselves in a transaction and Wisconsin has a de facto facilitator law as a result of the WRA's deceptions under the Agency "Reform" Act of 1994. Call, write or email your legislator today and make sure that they know that you oppose Designated Agency. You cannot trust the Wisconsin Realtors Association. They do not speak for individual Realtors. They speak for their mega-broker constituencies. In spite of the fact that the full language of the Designated Language legislation has not yet been drafted/submitted, you can find out how to contact your legislator to register your oppostion to Designated Agency by going to: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/wamltest/ Coming Next: "Putting the 'Wisconsin Realtor' Back in the Wisconsin Realtors Association". Learn who really controls the WRA, how they have managed to abuse the citizens of the State of Wisconsin, and how realtors of good conscience can fight against, or possibly even take back the WRA. One final comment. What Attorney Staff said about a broker/owner who asked that his entire firm be unsubscribed was correct. I have told two broker/owners that I would not remove their firms, as it is not their right to censor what individual WRA dues-paying licensees who work for them see and do not see. My thanks to the THOUSANDS of you who are giving the truth a chance to be spoken. -- Sincerely Yours, 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