Sir Walter Scott who passed away in 1832 quoted “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when we first practice to deceive.”

In The commercial real estate business there is a type loan called a CMBS loan. It is a non-recourse, long term, fixed rate, fully assumable financing vehicle. That’s it. The perfect loan. That all that’s need to be said. Right?

Well maybe not. My experience has taught me that when something sound perfect, I am not asking the right questions. There is always another side. In the case of these type loans it is almost like predatory lending. When the lender is telling you all the reasons why this loan is perfect, they forget to tell you that the loan really is not assumable on its current terms and that the borrower’s equity will be locked up for 10 year with no way to get it and lastly that the bank you closed your loan with will be replaced by a company that could care less about you. That is the other side.

Now on a personal level, we all know that when you start to deceive, you have to keep deceiving in order to not get caught deceiving. Ha. One lie turns into five and then the five turns into 10.

This week I had a client that was upset because I didn’t get his hotel sold. He asked me why and I told him it was my fault. I told him I just advised him wrong on the value and all the blame lies with me. Much of the steam of his anger went away by soft spoken honesty. Last year I was pitching on a large hotel in Florida and I asked the seller who we were competing with. He told me the other broker’s name and I told him he needed to hire that other broker because he was better than I was on hotels like his. The seller was speechless. I knew we were not the perfect broker for his big deal because our specialty is different. I would like to believe that the seller in that example will recommend us in the future.

One time when I was in the first grade I stole a quarter from my parents and bought 5 candy bars (I am old because candy bars were a nickel then) and hid them. It felt so good to buy those candy bars but it worried me so much that it made me sick. I couldn’t even eat the candy bars and I finally had to tell my mom what I had done. She was sweet and used the situation to teach me a life lesson.

When you set out to deceive, it ends up costing you peace and joy and disrupts the flow of your life. There are people that all they know is deceit. They lie unconsciously and continually. To them it is just a way of life. It impedes their rest and their sleep because it wakes them up just thinking about it.

Everyone reading this blog post knows that deceit is harmful, mostly to ourselves. I would advocate not to practice deceit, rather just tell the truth. Every time you lie it is like adding a pound to your backpack. After a while it gets heavy to carry it around every day. It is very freeing to not add more weight to the backpack we carry but instead take some weight out. It is actually energizing to be truthful and it will make you a better person. KT