- In 2007 Michael Hellickson, and his wife Tara, discovered the Dept. Of Licensing was breaking the law.
- Hellickson hires Doug Tingvall.
- Tinvall is considered by many to be the top real estate attorney in Washington State.
- Tinvall was the principle drafter of “The Law of Real Estate Agency”, , which was passed into law by the Washington State Legislature in 1997.
- Hellickson files suit against DOL seeking to force the DOL to obey the law.
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- Hellickson is VICTORIOUS, and obtains court order PROHIBITING DOL from issuing a subpoena for records without a warrant or showing probable cause.
- DOL hires Rebecca Jones (investigator) full time, to try to find evidence of wrongdoing on Hellickson’s part, at any time during their approximately 20 year career as real estate agents.
- Jones spends many months conducting an extensive investigation and soliciting complaints from anyone who will sign one.
- Jones succeeds in finding 23 people (19 agents and 4 short sale sellers) willing to sign complaints written by the DOL.
- Common complaint from the 4 sellers was that Hellickson was unable to get their deficiency waived.
- May of 2010, DOL sends letter to Hellickson stating the conclusion of the investigation
- NO action is taken by DOL against Hellickson
- DOL provides NO request for any corrective behavior from Hellickson
- DOL DOES NOT notify Hellickson of ANY suspected violations of ANY kind.
- NO charges of any kind are filed against Hellickson.
- DOL violates Hellickson’s right to Due Process by revoking Hellickson’s real estate licenses at 4:45pm on the day before the Labor Day Weekend Holiday. (This action would later be classified by a Superior Court Judge as “Clearly retaliatory behavior”.
- DOL uses an “Emergency Revocation” of Hellickson’s licenses, which has NEVER been used for ANY violation other than mis-allocation of trust funds or criminal activity in Washington State History.
- Hellickson doesn’t even have a trust fund account, but rather holds ALL money in 3rd party ESCROW companies for EVERYONES safety and security, and so no possibility of trust fund mis-allocation exists.
- Hellickson was never, and has never been accused of ANY criminal wrongdoing.
- DOL cc’s the MLS on the email revoking Hellickson’s license, and instructs the MLS to remove all of Hellickson’s listings from the MLS.
- Hellickson is forced to lay off over 40 employees, and is prohibited by law from contacting Hellickson clients.
- Hellickson loses roughly 750 listings and pending transactions, with approximately $4,500,000 in commission dollars due Hellickson being lost as a direct result of the DOL action.
- FNMA begins their own independent investigation of Hellickson practices.
- It takes 30 days for Hellickson to successfully bring this issue before a Superior Court Judge
- The Superior Court Judge rules in favor of Hellickson citing the following:
- The DOL revocation of Hellickson Licenses is a violation of Hellickson’s right to Due Process.
- The DOL revocation of Hellickson Licenses is a violation of Hellickson’s property rights as a professional license holder.
- The DOL revocation of Hellickson Licenses is “Clearly retaliatory behavior”, as Hellickson sought to enforce the Court Order prohibiting the DOL from violating Hellickson (and all other agents and brokers) right against Illegal Search and Seizure.
- The Superior Court Judge orders the immediate reinstatement of Hellickson’s licenses, and scolds DOL for its behavior.
- The assistant attorney general who was “berated” in court by the Superior Court Judge exits the courtroom, and states to the TV reporters outside that she will “Make it my mission in life to see that Hellickson NEVER practices real estate in Washington again”.
- The Superior Court Judge rules in favor of Hellickson citing the following:
- Assuming this put an end to the DOL abuse, Hellickson restarts operation as a real estate company.
- FNMA concludes their investigation
- FNMA informs Hellickson that they have not found any wrongdoing and are in fact quite happy with Hellickson performance.
- FNMA gives Hellickson roughly 125 properties to sell, in an effort to help Hellickson get back on their feet.
- FNMA expresses interest in sharing their methods and practices with other FNMA agents as an example of “The right way to sell real estate”.
- Bank of America assigns roughly 60 properties to Hellickson to sell.
- Several other institutional clients list large numbers of homes with Hellickson.
- DOL begins the “Administrative Process” in which a state employee who reports to the DOL “acts” like a judge.
- Tingvall warns Hellickson that for the “Administrative Law Judge” to rule in Hellickson favor would be like any employee ruling against their own boss.
- The DOL calls Hellickson’s competitors as witnesses against him.
- Although Hellickson had been prepared to call several extremely happy clients as witnesses, they elect not to put their clients through that.
- Believing the DOL has failed miserably at making any case whatsoever, Hellickson calls only one witness, Mr. Verl Workman.
- Mr. Workman is Nationally a very well respected real estate coach.
- Mr. Workman testifies as to the following:
- Hellickson’s are of high moral fiber.
- Michael Hellicksonis an AMAZING marketing mind.
- Hellickson’s have helped thousands of homeowners as well as real estate agents in a time where chaos reigned in the marketplace.
- Michael Hellicksonused the exact same presentation, script, checklists, contracts etc. on EVERY one of the roughly 14 appointments Mr. Workman attended with Mr. Hellickson during a 2 day period.
- NONE of the sellers were rushed or coerced in any way.
- NO promises were made, other than those in writing.
- ALL of the sellers were aware of the prices their homes would be listed at, including any and all price reductions (if applicable)
- NONE of the sellers were promised that Hellickson would buy their home at full price.
- NONE of the sellers were encouraged to stop making payments on their homes.
- ALL of the sellers were fully aware of the restrictions contained within the 30 Day Guaranteed Sale Program, including its restrictions.
- Each and every one of the 14 sellers listed their homes with Michael Hellickson.
- DOL employees (Including the head of the DOL Real Estate Division) admit under oath to violating the law, and violating the Court Order prohibiting their random audits. They even go so far as to say that they have had meetings about the Order, and have NO INTENTION of ever following it.
- The state employee (not surprisingly) sides with their employer, and states that DOL may revoke the Hellickson licenses again.
- Hellickson appeals the state employees decision to the Washington State Court of Appeals.
- Tingvall informs Hellickson that the Washington State Court of Appeals only agrees to hear cases when they believe a miscarriage of justice has likely occurred.
- In yet another Hellickson victory over the DOL, the Washington State Court of Appeals agrees to hear the case.
- Michael and Tara Hellickson realize they have spent over $350,000 fighting a battle with the DOL that will likely continue no matter how many times Hellickson continues to beat DOL in ACTUAL Court.
- Fearing further expense and emotional trauma to themselves, their clients, their children and their employees, Hellickson takes the following steps:
- Hellickson contacts Tingvall and instructs him to drop the case.
- At Tingvall’s request, and feeling a sense of moral obligation to the professional community in which he served, Hellickson authorizes a large sum of money in legal fees to maintain the precedents that will benefit Real Estate Agent and Brokers Nationwide for decades to come.
- Hellickson contacts FNMA, Bank of America, and other clients to inform them that fighting this battle is not worth the economic and emotional damage it would do to the Hellickson family, clients and employees, and recommends they immediately seek alternative agent representation.
- Hellickson works with each client to ensure a smooth transition.
- Hellickson sells their real estate company to another agent.
- Michael Hellicksonand Tara Hellickson decide to focus on their Real Estate Coachingbusiness, their relationship, and their children. According to Hellickson’s it was their BEST DECISION EVER!☺
- The DOL continues to this day, to violate both the Law, AND the Court Order specifically prohibiting the illegal random auditing of real estate agents and brokers in Washington State.
- Although evidence of gross negligence exists, NONE of the state employees were so much as reprimanded for their deliberate and retaliatory destruction of Hellickson’s business and reputations.
Lessons Learned:
Besides the obvious “Don’t pick a fight you can’t win” (particularly with the government), we learned a lot from our last 5 years in real estate. Perhaps the most glaring lesson: “Don’t grow too big, too fast”.
In 2008, we grew from a company doing around 250 transactions per year to nearly 1,000 transactions per year in a single year! While that sounds great, it came with some major challenges, many of which we didn’t handle well at all. The most glaring was our lack of quality customer care. As hard as we tried, we couldn’t seem to staff up quickly enough to handle the rapid growth. As a result, we QUICKLY developed a reputation for being difficult to reach, hard to deal with, and in general, NOT a company agents wanted to do business with. Sure, we were doing great with our clients, but we forgot one very important detail… the agents in our community were our clients as well.
We worked diligently to hire quality staff, fire the substandard ones, and improve our customer service to agents and clients alike, and eventually it worked. Unfortunately, the damage was done. We had dug such a deep hole that no amount of effort would change the minds of some of the agents who had experienced the previous, sub-par service levels. We had earned a reputation that wasn’t positive, and fought many battles that would never had been issues as a result. Some of those battles were fought one agent at a time, some were fought in disputes brought before the MLS. The most shocking part of the MLS disputes, is that because of our reputation, combined with some other factors beyond our control, we were being fined for things other agents got a “pass” on, and the fines were 10-100 times the amount of fines given other agents.
Some would argue that much of this was due to jealousy and fear of our growing market share. While there is likely some truth there, MUCH of it could have been avoided had we simply treated agents in the marketplace like clients from day one. Ultimately, our failures in customer care resulted in a mob-like mentality within the agent community, and we became “public enemy #1”, a dubious distinction that is difficult, if not impossible to overcome.
Check out our Lessons learned page for more insights gained from our experiences, both good and bad.