It's very hard to check out the reputation of real estate brokers. Neither personal recommendations nor years of experience fully do the job (although both are useful at the margins). More than forty years ago, I was in school with a boy who was, I discovered, a pathological liar. He would make up elaborate stories to play practical jokes on classmates. About a decade ago, I was startled to see his name (very unusual) and face (three decades after I had last seen it) on a billboard in town. You know what occupation he pursues now. He seemed to have some visibility in our town as a successful business person during the height of the real estate bubble. He is still in the same line of work (but now just with lawn signs, not billboards) after the bubble popped. I wonder how any person shopping for a real estate broker could distinguish brokers like him from any other kind of broker.