The Ethics in Real Estate Industry

In the very competitive world of real estate, the fight for survival and control has pushed the people in the business to go to very extreme ends. Business people will do anything, including compromising their morals to get on the competitive end. However, there are people who are determined to hold their moral standing and fight for work ethics to be upheld all times. The purpose of this paper is to compare ethics and how different people maintain their standards in the real estate industry.

A comparison of The Ethics in Real Estate Industry

Foster in his book “alpha Male: Tale Of The battle Of Commerce” compares well how different people maintain the standards of ethics. The book brings out two people with different personalities, Jack and Liz. Jack is a person of high morals while Liz lacks moral direction and questions ethics in business. Jack Kendrick is a person of high morals and upholds work ethics all the times. At the beginning of the book Kendrick works as sales manager in a high-power real estate agency. Kendrick gets fired as he is not about to compromise his morals. Jack gets another job with another real estate agency; here he continues upholding his morals. Kendrick is not ready to lose his morals for anything not even for a job, money or power. Kendrick constantly clashes with his subordinate. Kendrick’s closest allies are his wife Lorna and his son Ian. Lorna supports her husband in his efforts to stand for the truth through love. Kendrick aims to pass his high moral standing to his son although it is hard for his son to understand (Foster 2010). Contrary, Peterson Liz lacks moral guidance and lacks personality substance to even question the credibility of her subordinates. Liz on the other hand, is a greedy, selfish and an aggressive agent working under Kendrick. Liz has no ethics at all and will stop at nothing to close a deal. Liz’s lack of ethics and aggressiveness makes her rise to power and wealth rapidly. Liz’s lack of morals is best described when she forces a young trainee to have sex with a client for a mutual benefit. The young trainee later commits suicide out of shame (Foster 2010).

The movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” also brings how far people in the real estate industry can go in order to make business deals. The movie is about four salesmen: Levene, Roma, Moss, Aaronow and their manager Williamson. The four salesmen stop at nothing to deliver as they are threatened to be fired if they do not perform.

Shelly Levene is a lazy man and a loser who lacks capacity to make big deals and he takes long period of time to finalize small time deals. Levene seeks to gain Glengarry leads the easier way; instead of working hard to gain clients he tries to use unethical tactics to have his way. When Blake tells them that they would lose and only the top two would retain the job, he goes to convince his manager, John Williamson to give him the leads. Levene fails to convince Williamson is to give him the leads and goes on to threaten him. When the threats fail to work he offers to bribe him. Williamson later accepts and tells Levene that he would only sell his leads. Levene does not have any money with him to pay for Williamson’s leads therefore he fails to secure the leads. Levene does not stop at that but later conspires with David Moss to break into the office to steal the Glengarry leads. Levene goes on to break into the office and steals the Leads. Levene is also a liar; he lies to get clients in the business. When Ricky Roma’s client James Lingk comes to the office to cancel a deal they had with Roma because his wife had told him to cancel the deal, Levene backs Roma in his plot to stop Lingk from cancelling the deal and pretends to be a rich investor and a friend to Roma. Levene also uses his sick daughter to gain sympathy from Williamson so that he can be given leads. Levene also uses his sick daughter to seek sympathy from Williamson to stop him from reporting that he is the one who broke into the office to steal the leads with a view to sell them to a competing agency (Mamet, 1992).

Ricky Roma is the top best salesman in the office. Roma is a merciless, untruthful and an immoral salesman. Roma lacks simple business ethics whenever he uses unorthodox ways to get his clients to bank on his ideas. Roma’s success comes from his talent to notice a client’s weaknesses and capitalizing on the weaknesses to make easy deals with them. A good example is when Roma sweet talks James Lingk and plays with his insecurity feeling in order to close a deal. Roma also uses lies to get his customers, an example is where Lingk comes to the office to cancel a deal he had made with him, Roma deceives him that the check he wrote the previous night was not cashed and he had time to discuss the matter with his wife and reconsider his decision of cancelling the deal. Roma is also corrupt as he buys the prime leads from Williamson and pays him to give his fellow salesmen the weak deals in order to destroy them.

Dave Moss is a witty and chatty person with big schemes. Moss lacks work ethics. Moss complains of the unfair pressure put on him and his workmates by their employers, Mitch and Murray. Moss plans to hit back at the employers by stealing prime leads and selling them to a rival agency. Moss tries to talk George Aaronow into his plot of breaking into the office and stealing the leads. When Aaronow refuses to be part of the plan, Moss intimidates him by informing him that listening to his plot only makes him an accomplice to the plan. Moss later conspired with Levene to break into the office and successful steals the Glengarry leads.

George Aaronow lacks self-confidence because of his low sense of self-esteem and sometimes lack of hope. Though Aaronow can make out his own stand he is liable to follows the advice that others offer. A good example is when Moss complains of the pressure their employers have put on them Aaronow joins him in complaining instead making his own decision. The inability to stand on himself makes Moss see him as a potential accomplice in his plan of stealing the Glengarry leads. Aaronow has some ethics and is not as morally corrupt as his workmates are. Although Glengarry does not report the plan Moss had to the relevant authorities, he refuses to take part in the planned theft (Mamet 1992).

John Williamson is the manager in the real estates’ agency. Williamson is corrupt and lacks work ethics because he sells the prime Glengarry leads instead of giving them free to the salesmen. Williamson receives bribes from the salesmen so that he can favor them in the allocation of Glengarry leads. Williamson favors some of the salesmen and has fallen out of favors with countless others. For example Williamson discriminatively gives the lucrative leads to Roma while giving Levene the worst leads. When Levene asks Williamson why he seeks to destroy him, Williamson asserts that he hates Levene and would wants to see the latter suffer (Mamet 1992).

Conclusion

The real estate industry is facing constant ethical issues concerning how people interact and do business. The people in the industry will stop at nothing to make sure they make a deal even if it means losing their moral values and ethics. If one makes a stand to stay on his moral values he is considered weak and may even lose his job. The movie “Glengarry Glen Ross” and the book “Alpha Made: Tale of the Battle of Commerce” clearly shows how the morals have been compromised in the industry.