Enough with the pretence. When a mediator advertises “free valuations,” they are not offering a service — they are selling an illusion. And worse: an illusion wrapped in colourful charts, reports with logos, and technical language that looks serious… but is nothing more than advertising brochures in disguise.
This is not just about ethics — it’s the law itself that forbids it. Law no. 15/2013, Article 17, is crystal clear: real estate mediation companies cannot value properties they are mediating. Full stop. Anyone who says otherwise has either not read the law… or has chosen to ignore it because the “free valuation” is a convenient way to win business.
The problem is that this staged performance creates artificial trust. The client believes they’ve received a rigorous and impartial analysis, when what they’ve actually received is a piece of marketing. Marketing dressed up as a technical opinion. The result? An elegant fraud, wrapped in a commercial smile.
And here lies the glaring contradiction: the mediator lives off the sales commission. So, they are never impartial. If they need to win the listing, they might inflate the price to please the owner. If they need to close the deal, they might lower it to convince the buyer. They “value” according to the scale of their commission. They are both judge and party — and in any serious market, that would be considered a scandal.
The damage is real. Owners who believe their house is worth more than it is. Buyers misled by unfounded prices. Deals that collapse at the first visit to the bank because the independent valuation — the one that actually counts for credit and investment decisions — does not match the mediator’s “free report.”
We are talking about far more than small bureaucratic details. We are talking about the corrosion of trust in the real estate market. About an environment where “anything goes” is still seen as charm. Where fraud is treated as a favour to the client.
And all this feeds a market of fictions: inflated values that never materialise, tainted negotiations that end in frustration, mistrust that erodes any sense of transparency. If we want maturity in the sector, we must expose this charade for what it is.
Valuation is science, method, civil liability, regulation, international standards. Mediation is selling, negotiating, bringing parties together. Confusing the two is not “offering a complete service”: it is deceiving, it is lying, it is devaluing those who truly know how to value.
The market does not need more friendly tricks. It needs clarity. And clarity begins here: valuing is not mediating. And calling something a valuation when it is nothing more than advertising is, quite simply, a lie.