Can a real estate commission and friendship mix?
Dear Nina,
I am a professional real estate agent who was helping a very close friend purchase a house. She went behind my back and negotiated her own sale directly from the builder. I have been working with her on and off for three years. I was devastated and hurt that she did this.
She left me a letter with a $100.00 gift card and thanked me for my time and hoped this would not come between our friendship. Of course I did not accept it and brought it back and stuck it in her mailbox.
I do not want anything to do with her friendship any longer. We have a mutual friend who supported me and agreed how unethical it was for her to go behind my back, however, I just found out that the mutual friend is still friends with my former friend and invited her to her house, which is fine, but I told her I hope she asked her why she did such a terrible thing. And now she said she does not want to be put in the middle. I think I am done with her friendship as well. I want friends who will support me and not give me mixed messages.
Please help me understand this situation and give me your honest answer.
Thank you, Hurt and Betrayed
Dear Hurt and Betrayed,
There’s no question that what your friend did was crappy and unethical. She took advantage of your friendship and essentially stole your time. And she can’t claim to be clueless about it because the $100 (!?!?!) gift card and note suggesting that this situation not get between you two demonstrates her understanding of how the commission was supposed to work.
The crux of your question is twofold:
#1. Should you end this friendship? You didn’t ask this. You said the friendship is over and I mostly agree with you, but I’m still putting the question on the table.
#2. Should the mutual friend stop being friends with your friend/client? You’ve made it clear you think she should, but I’m going to challenge you on that one.
I explained your situation to a friend who’s a real estate agent to get a sense of what it’s like when she works with friends.
She said, “When you decide to work with friends, you have to take the friendship piece out of it. In our industry this type of situation where the agent is cut out happens. It’s one of those live and learn situations. I’d be really hurt by this, too, and I’d probably need to cool off the friendship for a while. We definitely wouldn’t be as close, but I wouldn’t end the friendship.”
You’re not going to like this, but I appreciate my friend’s point of view about not shutting the door on this friendship forever.
Cool off to the point of almost frozen? Yes. Be VERY wary? Yes. I’d probably spend no time with her, and I’d have very little to do with her. But I don’t suggest erasing her completely from your life. The longer I write this column the more I get letters from people who regret ending friendships and want a way back to the relationship. Leaving the tiniest crack in the door allows for that possibility. In this case a “crack” might look a holiday card once a year. I’m not talking about an intimate friendship. She owes you a massive apology, and even then, it would understandably take time for your heart to soften.
But I’m moving onto the mutual friend because there’s no reason to lose two friends over this. Whether to keep a crack in the door with the friend/client is up for debate, but it’s clear to me that asking your mutual friend to get involved or end their friendship is unreasonable.
My best friend, Taryn, said,
“I don’t think the agent should cut out the third friend for keeping her own friendship going. Let’s pretend the third friend is the one who sent in the question and she said something like, ‘I have a friend who cut our mutual friend out of a commission for reasons I don’t understand. Now my agent friend wants me to end that friendship just like she is doing. What should I do?’ I think you’d tell her to stay out of it. My mom always says, ‘When two friends have a falling out, don’t pick sides or get in the middle. Most of the time, even years later, they make up and then you’ve lost a friend.'”
What your friend did to you has nothing to do with your mutual friend. Certainly your mutual friend will now see your friend/client differently, but she’s absolutely right to avoid getting in a conversation about the real estate deal and the ethics of it all. You can ask your friend/client that question. You and only you.
My mom agreed about the mutual friend, too. She said,
“The mutual friend is right not to get in the middle. It is not reasonable to expect friend 3 to take sides when friend 1 and 2 are having a dispute. The disagreement could be about anything and not just a business deal. We all have issues in our lives we need to deal with. No one has the energy or time to get involved in people’s personal disputes that have nothing to do with them. So if the mutual friend senses that your letter writer values loyalty more than her for herself—then the mutual friend will be the one to let the friendship go with your letter writer.”
Loyalty tests rarely end well. In a group situation, individual relationships exist, each with their own nuances and histories. I do not believe we owe our friends our undying loyalty in the form of dropping other friends.
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4 Responses
My opinion: A friendship where one person behaves unethically is crap. In this case I would even consider suing the „friend“ to get at least some money. I had a similar case over a bookdeal, where a very close friend, whom I helped considerably to get the book published, did not pay me the promised fee. I was angry, cooled the friendship. But after some time, we reunited and guess what: a similar thing happened. Contact with unloyal friends will never improve. It is always harmful.
I appreciate this perspective of it happening a second time. That’s a very fair point and legitimate concern when you’ve seen this kind of disregard for ethics the first time.
What was the agreement in the first place? If you are giving her the above to treat this situation as she would any other client, then there needs to be a mutual understanding in the beginning. Was there a broken contract/agreement? Or just a broken heart?
It seems as if this is the result of poor communication and assumptions of expectations. The woman who contacted you needs to take some accountability with what happened, learn from her mistakes, cool off, and take some time to become a better realtor and person.
Thec woman’s client might have ended up doing business by herself, but now she also won’t even recommend her as a realtor to anyone else because of her reaction with giving the card back, talking behind her back, expecting friendships to end, and ultimately not practicing forgiveness.
She can be better than this and I hope she chooses to do so.
The agent I spoke to also felt this was an opportunity for the letter writer to examine her own business such as the agreement made beforehand and whether her methods were working for the client. You make some great points here about recommendations and talking about the client in the community, even if just to the mutual friend.