I rent out part of my house here in Newport, RI. While I have most months covered for rental, I had the month of July open and had some trouble filling it for just one summer month.
During this past summer, I found myself in a distressing situation with a realtor, Ben Willett. This post delves into Ben’s potential ethics violation and the disappointing lack of accountability from Keller Williams and his manager, Jen Bove.
Ben and my agent are in the same brokerage. Ben originally contacted my agent and said he had people interested in my property for the month of July. He had us on the line and went through the application without mentioning any concerns about the price. He came back after the application was submitted and, in an email, offered a 12% reduction in our price.
While I don’t begrudge him or his clients for attempting to negotiate on price, how it was done felt disingenuous. We did additional research on the market and discovered there was no one else at our price point, so we held fast, and they ended up capitulating. So we had a deal.
Due to platform restrictions, they could only pay part of their security deposit upfront, but I was okay with that. I wanted to start the relationship based on trust.
With three days left in the month after the partial security deposit was paid, we received a text from Ben about a cat they were bringing that was not included in the lease application. There is a little disagreement about whether Ben had told my agent about the cat verbally, but it was not on the lease.
Here is Ben’s Text:
My agent does not remember Ben mentioning the cat, but he admits it might have slipped his mind. He doesn’t believe it did. Either way, it was not in the lease and was brought back to us several days later.
Regarding the timeline, about half the time left in the month went by before I was notified about the cat. This made things much more challenging, as I had significantly less time to rent for the month of July.
Now, if this were slip of the memory or a something Ben did not know about, it would be one thing, but it wasn’t. After my tenants moved in, they discussed with me how they had another property lined up but had to back out because they would not accept the cat. This means that they knew the cat was an issue and PURPOSELY did not disclose this on their original rental agreement. While the clients are not bound by a code of ethics, Rhode Island real estate agents do have a code of ethics. This directly violates Article 2 of the code, which states:
Article 2 Realtors shall avoid exaggeration, misrepresentation, or concealment of pertinent facts relating to the property or the transaction.
This clearly shows that Ben violated the code of ethics. At this point, I was distraught with Ben and how the situation was handled.
In response to my frustration, I contacted Ben’s boss, Jen Bove, the owner of the local Keller William brokerage. Jen dismissed my concerns by saying, “She has never heard any complaints about Ben before.” She then promised she would get back to me early next week. She never did.
After much reflection, I realized I was not comfortable leaving the interaction where it was. I talked to several friends and one suggested leaving a Google review on my experience. One causal acquaintance was a fellow agent working on a deal with Ben. He told me he would try and prod Ben with the situation. Upon reconnecting, apparently, Ben had told my friend that he had talked to my broker and, in his words, “did nothing wrong” and, therefore, was completely non-plussed about my feelings.
At this point, I felt that I had write the review to talk about how these people had been treating me and perhaps prevent them from treating others in the future. At the very least, they were dismissing my feelings and not hearing my position.
Here is the original review in full:
Ben represented tenants applying to my home. He actively concealed information about his tenants on their application (e.g., knowing they had a cat and omitting it). After we agreed on terms and received the security deposit, Ben came back to us and said that his tenants actually had a cat. Would we need to fill out additional paperwork, or would the landlord just “be cool” with it?
Ben never apologized.
I contacted Ben’s broker about my frustrations with the situation, but no action was ever taken. I later heard that Ben talked to his boss and said he had nothing wrong, but I think differently.
I would not recommend using Ben in any of your dealings.
Also of note, he tried to move my tenants into another property and inspected it, but when they went to move in, they found the property was nowhere near acceptable for them. I’m not convinced that Ben actually cares about the needs of his clients. There are MANY agents in this town; find someone else.
After silence from Ben, the broker, and my agent, the morning following the posted review, I received a call from my agent. He told me that Ben had called me earlier that morning, demanding he get me to take down the review. My agent reiterated that it was my decision but that Ben wanted me to take down the review.
During my conversation with my agent, I disclosed that a call from Ben or the Broker would probably be more appropriate at this point. I said he was free to relay that information with my contact information to Ben.
The following week Ben called me and we had our first conversation. During the course of the conversation, Ben told me that he understood why I would be upset with the situation, but said the only person I could be upset with was my agent. Despite not having any proof other than his verbal conversation with my agent about the cat, which he claimed was witnessed by his assistant, he maintained that he had done absolutely nothing wrong. When I asked him about details like when he updated us about the cat, he used the word immediately, even though we have an indication from the text that it was days later.
No matter my concern, Ben seemed to have an answer to explain his behavior. While his answers were plausable, none of them came across as genuine. They came across as self-serving. I left the conversation more upset than I had entered it. I thought about updating the review with the content of the phone conversation but decided that rather than talk about how upset I was, I’d instead move on.
However, Ben was not content and decided to call me back and continue asking me to modify the review. In our second phone call, Ben was much more relatable, and I left believing that there was a chance that my interaction with him might not have been typical. I modified my review from one star to three stars and included the following at the top:
Update: I have now talked to Ben several times about this review. While my experience with him was less than stellar, it might be possible that I just got the worst of Ben, and this is not a true representation of how he does business completely.
Hopefully, I will update this with more information about the nature of our conversation and where I might have been mistaken below, but in the meantime, please consider making your own opinion about him.
The content of the second phone call is less vivid for me. I remember Ben talking about the phone call with my agent, remaining very constant, and he notified my agent verbally about the cat before the application. He also wanted to share more context on the experience of my tenants as they were moving out and how he had done his best for them when moving into the place after my rental.
He mentioned that he had learned a couple of lessons from this. Firstly, he had learned to put everything in writing and make sure that everyone knew all the information. If people’s applications were changing, he would now make them update them instead of continuing to shop old applications around.
I told him the real issue was that he and his boss ignored my concern and did nothing to hear me out until I made my post in a review. He acknowledged that it would have been better if we had talked earlier.
Again, at this point, I was happy for our interaction to be done. It was not.
Earlier this week, Ben contacted me for a third phone call. He referred to my words in my review about updating my review with more details as an invitation to continue discussing the situation with me.
We talked, and during the conversation, the line I had written in the section about how there are plenty of agents and I would recommend working with someone else really bothered him.
During the conversation, it felt like everything he did was still very self-serving. Ben wants to be a successful real estate agent. Ben wants others to know that he genuinely cares about his clients. The truth is, I believe him. He wants good things for his clients. I wonder whether Ben would be willing to bend the ethics of his position to benefit his clients at the expense of a landlord. I remain unconvinced as all our interactions only happen when Ben seeks something from me. Namely, he wants me to change my review and put him in a better light.
In addition to my experience, I have asked several other people around town about their knowledge of Ben. Several people who did not give me consent to share their names have shared that he does not have a good reputation. They volunteer this information only after I share my experience, so this is confirmation bias, but I leave all this interaction feeling that Ben is focused on Ben’s interest.
In response to our last conversation, I will update my review again. I will try to keep this post current as the situation evolves.