Buyer Sues Agent

While stock markets across the globe bleed, I found this interesting story about a home owner suing her real estate agent.

Marty Ummel believes she paid too much for her house. So do millions of other people who bought at the peak of the housing boom.

What makes Ummel different is that she is suing her agent, saying it was all his fault.

...

The defendant in the Ummel case is Mike Little, a veteran agent with ReMax Associates. He will argue that Marty Ummel, who brought the case with her husband, Vernon, is trying to shift the blame for the couple's own failures of research and due diligence.

"They simply didn't do what is expected of a knowledgeable, sophisticated buyer, and are now looking for someone other than themselves to take responsibility," Roger Holtsclaw, an agent who was hired by Little as an expert witness, said in a court deposition. -Seattle Post Intelligencer, January 21, 2008

Taking responsibility. That's going to be a central theme in the years to come. And it looks like the lessons are now beginning, both on a macro and a micro scale.