Rhode Island Real Estate Broker Exam — All Questions

A brokerage engages an unlicensed telemarketer to call prospects, and she tells several of them that a listed house 'will definitely appraise above the asking price.' Who bears responsibility for that statement?

• a.Nobody, because an unlicensed person owes no duty to prospects
• b.The seller, who benefits from the statement made to prospects
• c.The telemarketer alone, as the speaker of the false statement
• d.The broker, who is responsible for people the firm engages✓

A broker answers for the conduct of everyone the firm puts to work on its behalf, licensed or not, and using an unlicensed caller to make substantive claims about value adds a second problem: allowing unlicensed activity. Saying nobody is responsible would let a firm outsource its misrepresentations. Pinning it on the caller alone ignores that she was acting for the brokerage within the scope of what she was hired to do. The seller did not authorize the statement and is not the one who engaged her.

A seller signs a written instruction directing the listing broker not to present any offer below $600,000. How should the broker treat that instruction?

• a.Disregard it, since a seller may never restrict which offers are presented
• b.Honor the written instruction, unless state law makes presentation non-waivable✓
• c.Honor it, and screen offers this way on the seller's oral word alone
• d.Honor it, and let it cover an offer competing with the firm's own buyer

A client may narrow the broker's marketing instructions, and a broker may follow a limit on which offers to bring forward, provided the limit is in writing, sits in the file, and does not collide with a state rule making presentation of written offers a duty the seller cannot waive. Treating any such instruction as void overstates the law, since the seller controls the terms of the sale. An oral limitation leaves the broker nothing to show a regulator or a court later. And the instruction cannot be stretched to bury an outside offer that competes with one from the firm's own buyer, which turns the seller's convenience into the firm's self-dealing.

A listing agent holds a strong written offer from an outside brokerage but delays presenting it for two days while she works up a competing offer from her own buyer prospect. Which duties has she breached?

• a.None, because timing of presentation is left to the agent
• b.Confidentiality and accounting, by leaking the seller's position and mishandling deposit funds
• c.Obedience and care, by ignoring a written office procedure
• d.Loyalty and disclosure, by putting her own interest ahead of the seller's✓

Two duties fail at once. Loyalty is breached because the delay serves the agent's chance at both sides of the commission rather than the seller's interest, and disclosure is breached because a strong offer is a material fact the seller was entitled to receive without delay. Confidentiality and accounting are not implicated; nothing was leaked and no funds or documents were mishandled. Framing it as a mere procedure violation understates a fiduciary breach. And presentation timing is not the agent's discretionary call when a client's decision is being withheld.

A broker is drafting the office policy covering square footage, lot size, and tax figures that agents copy from public records and older listings. What should the policy require?

• a.Bar agents from publishing any figure the firm did not measure itself
• b.Treat government records as verified, since the assessor compiled them
• c.Rely on one blanket disclaimer at the bottom of the firm's marketing
• d.Attribute each figure to its source and urge independent verification✓

The workable rule is attribution plus verification: name where the number came from, state that the firm has not confirmed it, and tell the client to verify anything that matters to the decision, so the figure stays the source's representation instead of becoming the agent's own. Forbidding outside data altogether is unworkable, since listings cannot be built without it. Calling assessor data verified adopts the very error that gets firms sued, because tax records are compiled for valuation rather than for measurement. And boilerplate at the bottom of a page does not neutralize a specific figure an agent knew or should have known was wrong.

Two buyer clients of the same brokerage, each working with a different licensee, decide to bid on the same listing at the same time. How should the brokerage handle the conflict?

• a.Tell each buyer what the other is offering so both compete fairly
• b.Disclose the conflict and keep each buyer's terms private✓
• c.Let the licensee with more experience present the stronger offer
• d.Require one buyer to withdraw so that the firm avoids a conflict

The firm owes loyalty and confidentiality to both buyers, so it must tell each that the brokerage represents another interested buyer and then keep every offer term walled off between the two licensees. Revealing one buyer's price to the other would breach the confidentiality owed to whoever is disclosed. Forcing a client to drop out sacrifices that client's interest to the firm's convenience. And letting one licensee decide which offer goes forward means the firm is choosing between its own clients, which is exactly the favoritism loyalty forbids.

Two visitors at an open house begin telling the licensee holding it open about their finances and how motivated they are to move quickly. What does the principle of agency disclosure require?

• a.Say nothing about the relationship until the visitors ask who the licensee represents
• b.Disclose the relationship at the closing table in writing
• c.Disclose in writing whom the licensee represents before confusion arises✓
• d.Disclose the relationship only after an offer has been prepared and signed

Agency disclosure exists to stop a consumer from confiding in someone who works for the other side, so the licensee should identify in writing whom the firm represents at or before the point where confusion could occur, which is right now. The specific timing rule and the form vary by state, but the principle does not. Waiting to be asked leaves the visitors relying on an agent of the seller. Disclosure at closing comes long after the harm. Waiting until an offer is drafted is equally late, since the confidences have already been shared.