Conversations surrounding agent safety—or lack thereof—aren’t new in the industry, but certain events catalyze renewed focus on what needs to be done to move the needle forward.
In the wake of a recently filed lawsuit against eXp Realty and eXp World Holdings, concerns about agent safety have come to the forefront of discussions among pundits and advocates who call for more stringent protocols to ensure that agents are safe both externally and internally.
“So often agent safety education and awareness is centered around external predators,” says Carl Carter, founder of the Beverly Carter Foundation. “Allegations such as these are a harsh reminder of risks that exist from within our industry.”
While the lawsuit against eXp provides details of different scenarios, Carter says it underscores a more significant issue that needs to be addressed.
“They’re just these horrendous stories about these bad actors,” Carter says. “I think as an industry it’s easier for us just to accept that these risks are associated with external parties and not those that literally walk and work among us, every single day.”
eXp and several executives, including founder and now CEO Glenn Sanford, are named in a lawsuit filed by Fabiola Acevedo, three Jane Does and one John Doe, alleging two of eXp’s current and former agents sexually assaulted them at the company’s recruiting events dating as far back as 2018.
A 57-page complaint delves into several plaintiff accounts where agents Michael Bjorkman and David Golden allegedly drugged and assaulted them at events across the country, including events in Beverly Hills, California and Las Vegas, Nevada. There have been no criminal charges filed. Bjorkman was arrested on two counts of sexual assault related to the alleged Las Vegas incident however the case was dismissed. Golden was not arrested after an investigation. The matter is in civil court now.
Lawsuit update
The February 2023 lawsuit also claims that eXp executives did nothing to assist the alleged victims after repeated reports of the incidents. Those allegations have also come to a head, as the plaintiffs in the case amended the lawsuit to name Sanford and Brent Gove (a top recruiter for the brokerage) as defendants.
“These allegations include decisions made in the face of these serious allegations to protect the financial income stream to the company rather than the well-being of the Plaintiffs and others,” read a recent statement from the law offices of Cohen Hirsch, LP and Lenze Lawyers, PLC, which are representing the plaintiffs.
The amended complaint claims that Sanford and Gove opted not to act despite knowing Bjorkman and Golden’s actions. The complaint suggests that Sanford and Gove were “complicit in allowing the assaults to occur.”
“Rather than conducting a legitimate investigation into the Plaintiffs’ complaints regarding defendant Bjorkman and defendant Golden, defendant eXp Realty, defendant Gove and defendant Sanford did a cost-benefit analysis and decided it made economic sense to continue to pay defendant Golden and Defendant Bjorkman” read the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also alleges that Sanford and Gove “gaslit” the plaintiffs by “repeatedly” acting as if they heard the assault complaints for the first time, despite claims that the plaintiffs had disclosed the event and both parties were alerted to the actions.
The plaintiffs also claimed that eXp attempted to cover up the alleged crimes with non-disclosure agreements.
eXp disputed the allegations in an emailed statement sent to RISMedia.
“We take these allegations seriously and have zero tolerance for anything that would create an unsafe work environment,” said an eXp spokesperson. “As such, we have and will remove a contractor accused of assault.”
Sanford expressed a similar point in a recent interview with RISMedia, where he stated that eXp cut ties with Bjorkman and Golden after Sanford (who wasn’t CEO then) and corporate leaders cut ties with both agents.
Sanford disputed claims made in a February press release that followed the lawsuit filing.
“The plaintiff’s counsel made it sound like they left on their own accord,” he said. “No, we released him, and there were allegations in the civil complaint against another agent that we had never heard before because we’d never been presented that information that I’m aware of.”
According to Sanford, eXp “took immediate action in both cases when we found out that there had been potential wrongdoing.”
He also indicated that the brokerage denied Bjorkman’s attempts to return to eXp following his 2021 arrest in Las Vegas on two counts of sexual assault related to at least one of the alleged incidents.
The case was dismissed later that year, but Sanford said eXp “refused to because the information was still bad, and we didn’t feel like that made sense.”
While the spokesperson didn’t comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, they said the allegations against eXp and Sanford are “without merit.”
Looking ahead
The controversy surrounding this lawsuit and the claims against eXp hasn’t stopped the brokerage from attracting new talent—a significant aspect of eXp’s business model. The company recently added industry heavy hitter Kendall Bonner, her 17-agent Kendall Bonner Team, and several other agent teams coming out of the Tampa market.
Bonner tells RISMedia that she was saddened by the news surrounding the lawsuit—specifically the impact on the alleged victims. While she hoped the plaintiffs could get justice, Bonner disagreed with the accusations against the company.
“A human was responsible for that, not a company,” she says. “Another person is responsible for that, and as people, I believe in ultimate accountability, which is a personal responsibility for us to take.
“I think that is really what it comes down to at the end of the day,” Bonner continues. “For me, this community of eXp is so much bigger than the very wrong act of one or two individuals, and having done criminal defense and being a lawyer and having those connections to that, my perspective is probably always going to be a little different than the traditional non-lawyer.”
Policies and independent contractors
As independent contractors, there are limits to what a brokerage can do in promoting or enforcing agent safety, but Carter thinks more can and should be done on that front.
In light of the allegations made in the eXp lawsuit, he says more questions were left unanswered. Among them is to what degree brokerages should be protecting their agents, where the line should be drawn, and whether that line is different for internal and external predators.
“That’s kind of the crux of this whole lawsuit,” Carter says. “Throughout the time that I’ve tried to influence safety within the industry, I’ve heard time and time again that as an independent contractor, ultimately, an agent is responsible for their own personal safety.”
At the same time, Carter stressed the importance of reporting incidents.
He acknowledges that some brokerages and associations have tried implementing policies or warnings to identify and encourage reporting. However, he says some efforts may put those parties at legal risk.
“You may have even seen similar stories in that,” he says. “It kind of opens the door for litigation just because of slander and one person’s experience or their opinion of how someone else was acting…It’s a slippery slope.”
That said, Carter says he hopes that the lawsuit against eXp—and the attention it gets—catalyzes further action on the brokerage level and the industrywide scope to improve conditions of internal and external safety.
“I think this is absolutely impacting, at least if nothing else, the processes within brokerages to report this kind of heinous behavior in a formal way that the company is actually handling that,” Carter says. “Secondarily, I can only hope that this would also really force the hand of every conference we see, especially in the spring and the fall, that we need to as we are hosting these events to ensure that it is a safe place.”
Tracey “The Safety Lady” Hawkins, founder of Safety and Security Source, echoed similar sentiments, suggesting that the allegations in the lawsuit underscore a more pervasive issue within the industry.
“Here we are, another lawsuit involving real estate agents and sexual harassment,” Hawkins says.
She tells RISMedia that the lawsuit and the detail within the complaint reminded her of another incident in 2022 when a Redfin agent claimed that a photographer sexually harassed her at one of her listings.
“It could be systemic, and what needs to happen is that the real estate industry needs to take sexual harassment prevention training more seriously,” Hawkins adds.
She acknowledges that the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) has a sexual harassment policy—which she covers in her courses—but notes that the policy surrounding the topic is broad and could use further honing.
She suggests that extended anti-sexual harassment training should be required training among agents and brokers.
“This is where company culture comes in, as well as safety and security culture,” Hawkins says.
She has been advocating this topic in her courses and in articles featured on RISMedia, where she claims that “safety culture should be mandatory in the real estate industry.”
In a video post, Hawkins outlines several ways to improve safety culture in a real estate business, asserting that it starts from the top down.
In her recent interview with RISMedia, she argues that brokerages and real estate leaders are morally obligated to foster a company culture where agents can be physically and psychologically safe.
Delving deeper into the latter point, she notes that it’s about cultivating an environment where employees and agents can “speak up” and report misconduct to leadership without fear of reproach or retaliation.
Looking at eXp’s situation, Hawkins thinks the firm fell short in promoting a culture where defendants could do that.
“People think that psychological safety is some touchy-feely concept, but in this situation, if those (three) agents had psychological safety, they would have immediately gone to the leadership and said, ‘this is what happened,’ and they would have known that it would have been handled and dealt with,” Hawkins says. “So, the company should make sexual harassment prevention training mandatory, not only to talk about defining what sexual harassment is and how it could jeopardize their membership in NAR, but it should be talked about from their company perspective that it increases liability, not only for the agents, but for the brokerage.”
