Updated 20 September 2026: first published on Elite Agent in April 2026. This editorial is preserved as an argument about trust and accountability. Regulatory references describe dated announcements; the passages about 2030 are predictions. Use the official sources linked below for regulatory records.
If someone who’s spent 13+ years writing about this industry can be charmed into writing the success story, what chance does an average seller have when that same charm shows up at their kitchen table with a listing agreement?
It’s been a while for me between “serious” editorials, but my word for this year is “values.” Maybe I knew in my gut that it would be tested this year. These are interesting times, and so, well – here we are.
Grab a cuppa and strap yourself in.
The catalyst
On 2 April 2026, NSW Fair Trading announced a ten-year disqualification for Josh Tesolin from managing or operating a licensed real estate business. That announcement was the catalyst for this April editorial.
The announcement set out the regulator’s findings and noted the right to seek review. For current regulatory records, use the official NSW register. The dated announcements here should not be read as confirmation of current licence status or the outcome of any review.
Tesolin’s response to the ban, via podcast? “I’ve got lots of money, lots of good friends. I’ve got a great legal team as well.”
And, my personal favourite: “Journalists that write erroneous articles… they need Jesus.”
Dear Josh, we do not need Jesus. What we actually need is change and the truth.
My relationship with Josh
I met Josh Tesolin quite a few times. Elite Agent documented his rise. One of our former employees wrote one of the first stories about him, about how he made a million at GCI in his first year.
I thought I’d seen it all before. I reluctantly invited him in for a podcast, and I actually didn’t want to like him. But he somehow won me over. He was charming and funny, with the gift of the gab. What really got me was how he spoke about his mother with such genuine love that you couldn’t help but warm to him.
I feel a bit like an idiot now.
But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? The charm was always the product. The system just never asked what it was being used for.
We celebrated him
Let’s start with what’s really uncomfortable.
The industry that just watched one of its most celebrated agents get a decade-long ban is the same industry that celebrated him. Repeatedly. Publicly. With trophies, stages, keynotes, and accolades.
Top Agent. Number One. Record-breaker. Six-time this, three-time that.
Volume and revenue dominate so much of the way we celebrate success. My concern is how much weight we give those numbers compared with the experience and outcomes of the people behind them.
Maybe that’s a big part of the problem.
Two cases, one question about standards
Here’s the detail that should worry everyone as much as, if not more than, the Tesolin ban itself.
Another agent was also the subject of regulatory action. On 25 February 2026, NSW Fair Trading announced a 60-day licence suspension following findings about selling-price representations, estimates and offers not being passed to sellers. Its investigation was continuing at the time.
Two cases involving price representations.
To me, that raises a question about the system as well as the individuals. What are we rewarding, and what are we prepared to look past?
In its 25 February 2026 release, NSW Fair Trading reported disciplinary action against more than 50 agents in the preceding 12 months. It directed consumers to its Name and Shame register.
I hate the idea that this thing even has to exist, because it affects all the good people in the industry who spend their lives in these shadows while doing the right thing.
Culture is caught, but these practices are taught
Tesolin did the wrong thing, but he didn’t invent underquoting.
He didn’t invent auction conditioning. He didn’t invent “incentive commissions” or the practice of over-quoting to win a listing and then grinding the seller’s expectations down to meet the market.
They’re in coaching programs around the world. They’re on stages at industry events. They’re framed as “vendor management,” “price conditioning,” and “commercial discipline.”
The language is always clean. The outcome isn’t always. I’ve been seller conditioned. I literally wanted to throw something at the agent who was doing the conditioning and earnestly delivering scripts I’d heard delivered on various stages over the years.
My point is, these practices did not emerge in isolation. They’ve evolved over time through a mix of training, experience and market pressure. And a lot of remixing of materials over the years.
The situation we’re looking at now isn’t only about Josh Tesolin. You’re looking at a standard set list that gets played at conferences and behind many a closed door. The only real difference is who’s in the DJ booth.
From Agent to Coach
So now we’ve come full circle, and there was a recent event where we’re not seeing anything that’s actually new, just people on stage “operating at a meaningful level within the industry”.
Again, there’s outrage. Everyone I’ve spoken to in the past week has said some version of the same sentence: “It’s not good enough.” “How can they be allowed to coach?”
You can’t be a coach if people don’t listen to you. The industry has to accept some responsibility here as enablers of some of the problems we complain about.
And that’s the bit that grinds me. A lot of the loudest voices right now are calling for cancellations and demanding new MCs at conferences – even though they deeply understand the ecosystem that built the problem. Outrage is easy. A cheap LinkedIn post costs nothing.
But not one of those posts has offered a single macro idea for what comes next. If your contribution to the conversation is calling for individuals to be cancelled and nothing else, it might be worth taking another look at the bigger picture.
The future: You cannot charm an algorithm
So… what’s the industry’s realistic response going to be?
It’s easy to be outraged once it’s safe, and I’m not going to pretend I am above that.
Too hard basket, perhaps? Again, not helpful.
Elite Agent published content featuring Josh Tesolin. We’ve since taken all of it down. Not quietly archived. Removed. And… we are actively reviewing more of our content now.
That’s not a victory lap. That’s a late start. But it’s a start.
In my AI keynotes, I talk about the “messy middle,” which, in terms of the real estate industry, is right now.
When I look at the various governments’ fixes for underquoting – like mandatory price guides and statements of information – through the lens of 2026, it feels a little bit like requiring a man with a smartphone to carry a map just to prove he knows where he’s going.
By 2030, a buyer’s AI assistant might help compare quoted prices with relevant records. Whether that produces a fair warning depends on the data, the comparison and a way to correct errors.
Such a system might flag a discrepancy for a buyer to investigate. A flag would still need evidence and context.
Looking at the tools emerging now, I can imagine consumers having more ways to examine an agent’s record by 2030.
For example, a future system might filter listings using verified conduct records. Whether that would be fair or useful depends on its standards and safeguards.
Market consequences could become another form of accountability, alongside regulation. This is a possible future I am imagining, not a capability I have established or a reason to dispense with regulators.
But we’re not yet in 2030, and the messy middle is where we live right now.
And it’s going to get messier…
What AI still can’t fix
AI can help organise comparable information and prepare questions for property research. The sources and calculations still need checking before anyone relies on the result.
But underquoting is not just about the data. It’s a psychological tactic designed to manipulate human behaviour – artificially inflating the crowd size on auction day.
This is the part that deserves more attention than it usually gets.
An AI answer cannot establish someone’s private intentions from public records alone.
Consider a hypothetical example: an AI answer estimates a house at $1.5 million while it is advertised at $1.2 million. A buyer might still think, “Maybe the seller is desperate. I should go just in case.” Neither number, by itself, establishes the property’s value or anyone’s intention.
If a crowd then arrives hoping for a bargain, the competition may create fear of missing out. That is a possible behavioural response, not proof that an AI estimate was a reliable valuation or that a particular outcome was inevitable.
That’s the gap. AI can help assemble and interrogate comparable information, but its estimate is not automatically a reliable valuation. The seller’s needs may not be part of the information supplied.
And as long as that asymmetry exists, the psychological playbook still works – even on informed buyers.
Closing the gap
So, right now, we have one foot stuck in the 2019 playbook of seller conditioning and information hoarding, while the other hovers over a possible future of greater transparency.
And let’s be clear: an agent’s job is to get the highest possible price for their seller. That is genuinely hard work. But let’s be brutally honest – it’s not just agents who are clinging to an old playbook.
There are plenty of sellers out there who aren’t squeaky clean either.
Every time a seller chooses the “bulldog” agent who promises a massive crowd, knowing full well that crowd is being lured by a fictional price guide, they are complicit, too.
Some sellers out there have historically loved the dark arts of real estate because the agent takes the ethical and regulatory risk, while they cash the cheque.
They want the highest price, and they rarely care if a few dozen buyers get their hearts broken and their wallets drained on building inspections along the way.
So, how do we actually achieve transparency if some sellers resist it and agents are still being trained to fight it?
We cross that bridge if and when the technology flips the financial incentive.
I doubt the shift will come from a sudden collective moral awakening alone. One possibility is that better evidence of conduct changes the financial incentives. But that depends on how the systems are designed and used.
If platforms assess conduct, they will need sound evidence, transparent criteria and a way to challenge mistakes. An opaque score is not the same thing as accountability.
Trust can shift from a regulatory burden to the ultimate premium feature.
What can we do now?
Of all the people I’ve talked to over the years in this industry, the vast majority agree that trust remains the foundation of this profession.
So in practical terms, what needs to change?
When I wrote this in April, I planned to ask industry captains for their thoughts and ideas in the following months. These were my starting suggestions:
Awards need a compliance filter. Volume without integrity is just noise. You shouldn’t be able to win a volume award without a customer outcome metric.
The franchise networks see the numbers before anyone else – they could intervene before someone goes off the rails, not after. Let’s promote radical transparency as a feature, not a flaw.
The portals and other platforms are data companies. They are perfectly positioned to pioneer algorithmic trust, if they choose to.
Coaching needs transparency. Unregulated doesn’t have to mean unaccountable. Choose wisely who you give your attention to.
The trade press – including Elite Agent – needs to be far more circumspect about who we hand the microphone to. I’ll be working hard on that one personally. I’d like to call on REB to do the same.
Conference organisers – rethink who gets the stage and your microphone. Maybe it’s time we invited some consumers up there, too – let’s actually hear what they want.
My point is this: No one micro-fix will solve this. Technology may change how conduct is examined, but the industry still has to decide what it rewards and how it holds people accountable.
The profession you want to be
Here’s what I keep coming back to.
Real estate agents – the good ones, and there are so many of you – are fiercely proud of what you do. You’ll tell me about the family you helped find their first home. The widow you guided through selling the house she’d lived in for 40 years. The investor who trusted you with a decision that changed their financial future.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of stories about these agents on eliteagent.com.
That pride is legitimate. You are good humans.
And it’s exactly why this moment matters.
Because every time an agent is caught doing the wrong thing, it doesn’t just hurt that agent’s reputation. It hurts yours. It lands on every doorstep conversation, every listing presentation, every auction registration where a buyer looks at you and wonders: Can I trust this person?
To the leaders of our major franchises, the heads of our portals, and the principal advertisers who fund this ecosystem: you are not the target of this frustration; you are the solution to it.
I believe agencies that adopt verifiable transparency will be better placed for the next decade. If an agent’s value depends on keeping secrets to drive up the price, better access to information challenges that. Managing a complex transaction with honesty and sound judgement remains valuable.
What I care about at this moment is whether the industry treats this as a line in the sand – or if change is just too uncomfortable.
Technology may expose more of what the industry has tolerated. Whether that leads to fairer outcomes still depends on the standards we set and the choices we make.
Note: We don’t have comments on the website to keep the user experience fast, but you can leave a comment here on my LinkedIn post.
This editorial was first published on Elite Agent. A version also appears on AI Powered Real Estate by Samantha McLean on Substack.