Is it ethical to offer money for a contractor (such as a realtor) to reach an agreement in the your favor?

Question

Say that a realtor suggests that you need a certain subjective requirement to be approved, but that the owner is somewhat flexible. Now, this is not a legal requirement, which would be illegal to break, but rather a subjective requirement, like that of an owner who wanted to make a decision on what requirements to make of the buyer before buying a house.

As a way to push things along, you offer a quantity of money to the realtor as a thanks for their time. In reality, you think of it as a sort of "bribe", to get them to do what you want, when they had previously made up their mind against your favor; but it's not really bribery, because you are not asking them to do anything illegal, only to try to convince the owner to decide in your favor. The compensation, as justified, is merely for the realtor's time and effort.

How would this circumstance be evaluated by ethical systems in philosophy?

Answer 1

The realtor is the agent of the seller. The ethical violations come in when you attempt to induce the realtor to do something that is against the interests of his client. That is, whenever you attempt to change the realtor from being the seller's agent into your agent, that's an ethical violation.

For example: If you tried to induce the realtor to hide information or provide false or misleading information, that would be an ethical violation. "Sell to him or we won't get anybody else at this price."

The reason that realtors usually work on commission is to try to get them to operate in their client's best interest. This presumes that "maximum selling price" is in the seller's interest. If you put your money into the realtor's hands, you may be pushing the realtor into a position where his motivations no longer align with the seller's interests.

Answer 2

I think your question is not a philosophy question but more of an ethics question. It sounds like the question you are asking could be answered by asking "would the subjective requirement hurt/damage someone else?". ex: it is illegal to build a granny flat behind my house in my city with out approval because it affects the economy, I build a granny flat to increase property value when I sell, nobody can tell the difference, 5 years later the economy isn't keeping up. This doesn't directly affect me but the indirect consequence makes it morally unjust.