AMPI Loses Credibility Expelling the Baja Fair Trade group from AMPI was a spectacular mistake, and it will be difficult to regain public credibility after this debacle. Buyers will be shocked when they hear that a group of honest people who proposed reasonable reforms were summarily expelled from the local real estate organization. The AMPI Old Guard leadership has hurt the reputations of respectable agents and developers in Baja, hurt the reputations of its own members, and made fools out of themselves. It will be difficult for both the image of Baja real estate and AMPI’s credibility to recover from this incident. When questioned about the affair, the AMPI Old Guard will offer an array of excuses for their actions that are designed to cover up the real reason for the expulsions. They will accuse Baja Fair Trade of slander, arrogance, bad attitudes, being foreigners, failing to know their place, not respecting local culture, saying bad things, and insulting Mexicans. This behavior is called "playing the Ugly American card", and it is nothing but a cowardly tactic designed to confuse people and deflect attention from the real reason for the expulsions. Make no mistake about it, Baja Fair Trade was expelled because they promoted reform, and the AMPI Old Guard will not tolerate that. The principles that Baja Fair Trade promoted are totally reasonable and long overdue. Full Disclosure, Title Insurance and Escrow are no-brainers, and a real estate environment that treats these ideas as heresy is in serious trouble. The reason for the lies and political posturing is quite simple. The Old Guard, led by the Remax/ Gustavo Torres crowd, regularly promotes investments that cannot pass any of these standards. For example, the La Jolla del Mar condominium project, owned by Torres, fails all three requirements. Therefore, the Old Guard must suppress notions of transparency or reform, because the concept is way too threatening to their business. The problem at AMPI does not lie with individual agents. Many, probably even most, of the individual agents at AMPI are respectable, ethical people that genuinely want to serve the public and do a good job. Many of them are independent minded and do not agree with everything the association does. Many of them have had prior ethics instruction in schools or at home, or possess an internal ethical radar. But, there are also inexperienced agents that are easily impressed or influenced by bad practices. With good leadership, even the less experienced agents have the potential to become excellent real estate promoters, but they will have to resist bad influences. The good news is that the candidates representing the Old Guard ticket were not re-elected in a recent AMPI election, which occurred the week after Baja Fair Trade was thrown out of the association. Although the Baja Fair Trade scandal may have helped the new leaders get elected, it is also possible that the Old Guard is losing influence at AMPI anyway. After the scandal, Gustavo Torres dispatched a team of enforcers to visit a Baja Fair Trade agent’s employer, demanding that the agent be fired. This intimidation tactic is just too ridiculous, and hopefully does not reflect the real will of AMPI’s membership. To restore AMPI’s credibility, the new leaders are going to have to apologize for the actions of the Old Guard, which will not be easy politically. Over at APIR, the other real estate organization, President Willie Bautista has never been involved in any ethics scandal and has been a fair minded leader in the past. Bautista’s motivation for attacking Baja Fair Trade probably was a result of misplaced pride and poor judgment, rather than a fundamental opposition to real estate reform. Still, Bautista embarrassed himself and his organization when he attacked the group. Overall, the Baja Fair Trade scandal is a dark day for Baja real estate, and the real estate associations will have a difficult time in recovering from this scandal.
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