September 21st, 2011 at 11:49 pm
A: Bev, as you know, our Personal Transaction Policy is designed to help agents avoid the conflict of interest involved in a transaction where are selling their own property. Obviously, in such a deal, the interests of the agent/seller may run contrary to what is required of a real estate licensee. As a result, rather than put you in that position, we have you appoint another Prudential agent to handle the listing, thereby avoiding the conflict. Since a beneficiary of a trust has an interest in the sale of the property, and how much money the seller gets, a property owned by such a trust is covered by our policy. Therefore, you need to hire another agent and act as a principal only.
Q: (Barbara Swanson) I read the article about using photos on your website that belong to other agents. If you are showing MLS listings with photos is that allowed? If I wanted to feature a home that was a “Good Buy” in a certain neighborhood or some other “Featured” home by having a link to the listing would that be allowed? I have seen other websites that link to reports that come from the MLS.
A: Barbara, in order to use pictures from another broker’s listings on your website, you need to have written permission from that broker. In almost every instance that you are referring to, that written permission is an IDX agreement signed by the broker. Based on those IDX agreements, any party to the agreement can have other broker/party’s listings on their website as long as the IDX rules are followed. Those rules require that the actual listing broker be identified by the second click made by a consumer. So, if your website is an IDX website, than you can show other broker’s listings and MLS photos. Without that written permission, however, you cannot do so.
As always, please let us know if you have any questions.
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