Should realtors be held responsible for their actions?

[Dale Osborn]

If you file a complaint against blatant unethical actions of some realtors, the State Real Estate Commission finds no fault wrong. Yet the National Association of Realtors spends millions in advertising every month to try to overcome the negative actions that give them a bad name.

Millions of homeowners are losing their homes each year. I feel that the realtors, appraisers, Title companies and others involved caused these problems and should be held responsible! They are smiling all the way to the bank as they have been paid and are not the ones losing their homes.

Am I the only one that feels that realtors should be held responsible for their actions?

[Jon Holdman]

If an agent does something illegal or against their code of ethics, yes, they shoudl be held accountable.

Are agents and the others you mentioned responsible because many people are losing their home? IMHO, no. Were they involved in the bubble, absolutely. IMHO, the real source of the bubble was all the CDOs and other debt packages that were created from mortgages. These looked like low risk, high yeild investments. Investors loved them and wanted more, more, more. Wall street, Fannie & Freddy and lots of banks willingly obliged. When they ran out of good borrowers, they loosened their lending criteria to qualify bad borrowers and generate more loans to package into more CDOs. That huge influx of money did what always does when there is too much money and too little product. Prices skyrocket. That's exactly what happened.

Are borrowers not at fault? No way. Lots of people who could never really afford a house were able to buy. People who could have bought a modest house bought much bigger ones using pay-option ARMs that did not reflect the true cost. Others refinanced and HELOC'ed every penny they could out of their houses. They spent the money. Now their loans reset and they can't afford the payments. Is it too bad they are losing their houses? Sure. But in reality they sold their houses when they took that money and spent it. Or, there were really just renters in a house they couldn't afford. It galls me to no end that people in that position go crying for help to stay in the house they already sold or can't afford when lots of other people (most people, I really think) bought a house they could afford with a fixed rate loan.

Should realtors and the others be held accountable for the situation? Let me ask another way, should stock brokers be held accountable for the dot com stocks they sold that ended up bursting? How about the railroad stocks 100 years ago?

Should someone who sold their house at the height of the bubble (as John Talbott recommended in "Sell Now!" published in 2006) and wisely held on to the proceeds have that money taken away?