Chapter 68: Chapter 68 The Shock in Jin City’s Intermediary Circle!
After the original landlord handed over full control of the property to the agency, these agents, in order to gain the trust of tenants, often signed rental contracts pretending to be the landlord. In the two years just before he graduated, Ma Ming naively believed these landlords were the actual property owners. Only later did he find out that these landlords were, in fact, the agents.
If one happened to encounter a real landlord, it was fine, but the chances of that were incredibly small, only about ten to twenty percent. The "landlord direct rental" information seen on the streets or online was usually posted by agents. And these agents had a habit of swallowing security deposits or unjustly deducting rent.
For instance, now that his one-year rental contract was up, the sub-landlord should have returned his 2,000 yuan security deposit. But this sub-landlord came up with all sorts of excuses to refuse the refund.
Originally, Ma Ming had planned to just swallow the loss. After all, it was only 2,000 yuan. The other party steadfastly refused to return it. If he wanted to sue or defend his rights, it would be time-consuming, strenuous, and costly. The other party probably saw through this and became so brazen.
"No way, 2,000 yuan is still money, I can’t just let it go!"
After watching Qin Mu’s "tutorial video," Ma Ming took a deep breath. He decided to follow the example and give it a try. This UP was right. Society needed more people who insisted on the truth. Why should honest and upright people be bullied and suffer losses?
Subsequently, he picked up his phone, composed a few messages, and sent them to the sub-landlord. At the same time, he forwarded the new video.
「The next day.」
Eight in the morning, inside a real estate agency office in Zizhou, Zhu Yuan Yin was eating breakfast while opening WeChat. This was his daily routine. Every day he came to the office, he cleared messages from contacts he hadn’t replied to the day before. These contacts were all his rental clients. He always needed to maintain good relations. Every three months, he collected rent.
Coincidentally, he saw the message Ma Ming had sent him in the early hours of the morning.
"Landlord, the lease is about to expire in a few days, and I plan to move out the day after tomorrow. Please transfer the 2,000 yuan deposit to me."
"As agreed upon in the contract, the deposit should be returned at the end of the term. If you don’t return it, I wouldn’t mind learning a thing or two from the UP in the video!"
Following these two messages was a video titled "I Just Wanted to Sell a House, but Ended Up Being Compensated with One." The view count was already over a million.
Threatening me? Zhu Yuan Yin scoffed coldly and nonchalantly played the video. He had seen too many such things already. At first, many tenants would be aggressive about getting their deposit back, even threatening to sue. But in reality, not one of them ever filed a lawsuit! Nowadays, lawyer fees for suing started at a few thousand and could go up to tens of thousands. Ordinary people really couldn’t afford to bring legal action. Furthermore, those who sued had to prepare their own evidence, wait for case filing, scheduling, court hearings, and so on. By the time a judgment was passed, at least one or two weeks would have gone by. And these working people, for one, don’t understand the process, and for another, simply don’t have the time to go through a lawsuit.
"Hello everyone, this video is delayed by twelve days, sorry for keeping you all waiting," the video began. "To explain the delay, remember I snagged that Ancient Wood a while back? I’ve been thinking about selling my old house and upgrading to a bigger one, so I haven’t made any videos."
In the video, a young man appeared on screen. He began to narrate the video’s content, explaining how he had encountered a dishonest agent while selling his house. This agent had created fake housing listings and inflated prices online.
This UP actually noticed it ahead of time, lucky him, Zhu Yuan Yin muttered to himself as he watched. Those dishonest agents are the kind that will eat you without spitting out your bones.
Although he was a dishonest agent himself, he only targeted rental deposits or rent. He hadn’t yet ascended to the level of a dishonest agent who dealt with house sales. Those types of dishonest agents, the more ruthless ones, would even pretend to be the original homeowners to conduct transactions, taking the money and disappearing immediately.
Just when he thought that after this UP realized the other party’s identity, he would stop the transaction, in the video, Qin Mu’s actions once again made his jaw drop.
Qin Mu had decisively signed the contract and counter-sued! He took the other party straight to court.
The lawsuit papers, acceptance notice, case filing notification, judgment document... A series of evidence onscreen left Zhu Yuan Yin completely dumbfounded. Especially at the end of the video: that dishonest agent was sentenced to three years and had to pay 2,000,000 yuan in compensation!
"Holy shit!" His eyes widened, and he couldn’t help but blurt out an expletive.
As an agent, watching a colleague get sent to prison and having to pay huge compensation, his emotions were very mixed. And it seemed that this case had directly triggered an investigation by the prosecutor’s office. In the video, the dishonest agent’s company was directly prosecuted by the prosecutor’s office! The trial was scheduled to officially start today!
Is this video real or fake? He swallowed hard and quickly turned on his computer. He checked the new judgments added yesterday on the Judgment Document Website. Among the thirty or so new cases, he found a judgment on a dishonest agent case that had occurred in Jin City. The details of the judgment were exactly the same as those in the video!
It’s real, it’s actually real... Zhu Yuan Yin’s heart skipped a beat. He closed the video and opened the chat window with Ma Ming.
After weighing the pros and cons, he felt... It would be better not to cause trouble for himself and the company over 2,000 yuan. If Ma Ming was like Qin Mu, a tough nut to crack... wouldn’t his company also attract an evidence investigation from the prosecutor’s office?
Thinking of this, he hurriedly transferred the 2,000 yuan deposit to Ma Ming. He also replied very cordially, "There must be fundamental trust between people. It was agreed that the deposit would be returned after a year; it’s written in the contract. Could I possibly embezzle it?"
After the transfer, he took a deep breath and immediately felt much lighter.
「Meanwhile.」
In Jin City, the judgment in the dishonest agent case from the day before had triggered a major earthquake within the local real estate agent community. Every major agent group was discussing this matter.
"Have you heard? Lin Zhen from Anjia Tianxia was sued, sentenced to three years, and fined two million yuan!"
"Anjia Tianxia is quite a big company, right? How come they couldn’t protect Lin Zhen? I heard Lin Zhen was their top seller last month!"
"You’re thinking too much. Anjia Tianxia can hardly save itself now. I heard that the prosecutor’s office has already prosecuted them, and their trial is today!"
"I found out the person who was selling the house is named Qin Mu. It was him who sent Lin Zhen to prison!"
"..."
The circle of agents was neither too large nor too small. In Jin City, many agents paid attention to what their peers were doing. For example, they watched out for which high-quality listings their peers had acquired or where they found quality clients, so they could poach them whenever possible. Consequently, news spread quickly. Lin Zhen being sentenced to three years was explosive news that immediately hit the headlines in the agent circle.
And the name Qin Mu was now known by all agents, big and small, in Jin City. After all, they had never encountered such a fierce figure before.