Starting my new role as a HITRUST manager has made me think a lot about what it truly means to run a business ethically — and what happens when an entire industry operates without that foundation. In cybersecurity and compliance, we spend endless hours mapping risk, implementing controls, and ensuring that obligations are lived, not just signed off on. HITRUST, after all, isn’t just a certification; it’s a commitment to transparency, accountability, and integrity in how businesses handle sensitive information.
Yet outside the walls of regulated industries like healthcare and financial services, I’ve come to realize that ethics are disturbingly negotiable. Nowhere is this more apparent than in real estate.
This isn’t some theoretical observation. It’s personal.
Over the past few years, as a homeowner and investor, I’ve found myself caught in a tangled web of predatory contracts, dishonest tradespeople, conflicted attorneys, and opportunistic brokers. I’ve been scammed, misled, overcharged, and flat-out lied to by almost every trade in the real estate industry. And what’s most shocking isn’t just the frequency of these encounters — it’s the total absence of any meaningful oversight or consequence for bad actors.
It’s one of the greatest personal pain points I’m experiencing right now. And I can’t help but wonder how we, as a society that claims to value fairness, accountability, and consumer protection, have allowed one of our largest industries to deteriorate to this point.
Frankly, if the real estate industry were a business line under my HITRUST program, I’d recommend shutting it down entirely until it could prove it was capable of operating ethically. At this rate, it deserves to be put out of its misery.
A Crisis of Trust
To the average consumer, the real estate industry is marketed as a service-based ecosystem designed to help people achieve the “dream of homeownership.” But behind the curated open houses, social media reels of smiling buyers, and glossy brochures, it’s a space dominated by one thing: profit-driven self-interest.
The problem isn’t just that individuals and companies want to make money — that’s capitalism. The problem is how they go about it and who pays the price when things go wrong.
Here’s the reality: every stakeholder in a typical real estate transaction is financially incentivized to prioritize closing the deal over doing what’s best for the buyer.
• Realtors earn commissions based on sales price and volume.
• Mortgage brokers are paid per deal.
• Inspectors want repeat business from brokers and agents.
• Real estate attorneys are often too close to title companies or brokerage firms.
• Contractors know there’s little legal recourse for poor workmanship.
• Title companies frequently engage in self-dealing arrangements.
The result is an industry where trust is assumed but rarely verified, and bad behavior is so normalized it’s practically part of the business model.
Homeowners take the brunt of this dysfunction.
What makes this particularly insidious is how opaque these dynamics are to the average person. Buyers go in believing they have safeguards in place — contracts, inspections, professional advisors — but those safeguards are often riddled with conflicts of interest and unenforced obligations. And by the time a problem surfaces, it’s too late. The money’s been made. The signatures are dry. The buyer’s left holding the liability.
The Legacy of 2008, and Why It Never Ended
Some people assume that these issues were exposed and addressed after the 2008 financial crisis. But while certain lending practices were tightened, the culture of opportunism and short-termism never left. In many ways, it’s just evolved.
The same misaligned incentives that fueled the subprime mortgage disaster still exist today — they’ve just moved downstream into the mechanics of everyday home transactions. And because these deals are often too small for regulators to prioritize, and too complex for buyers to contest individually, the abuses persist quietly.
If you think I’m exaggerating, spend a year buying a multi-family building or trying to manage renovations in a major city. You’ll be shocked at how quickly contracts fall apart, how often trades ghost their obligations, and how rarely accountability is enforced.
I was.
And as someone who spends my professional life dealing with frameworks like HITRUST — frameworks built on the premise that obligations aren’t just words, but actions you can prove and audit — the cognitive dissonance is staggering.
The Cost of a Broken System
The long-term consequence of this isn’t just bad experiences for a few unlucky homeowners. It’s a systemic erosion of trust that’s poisoning one of the most important sectors of our economy.
When trust disappears from a market, so does participation. People become reluctant to buy, invest, or engage. Risk premiums go up. Litigation increases. Reputational harm spreads. And industries that once thrived on human relationships devolve into transactional, zero-sum games where everyone’s angling for a win at someone else’s expense.
We’re seeing this play out in real estate now.
Homeownership is at its lowest rate in years.
People increasingly distrust agents and contractors.
Lawsuits are rising.
And regulatory action is largely reactive and toothless.
It’s not sustainable. And it doesn’t have to be this way.
Why the Mortgage Industry Needs a High-Trust Infrastructure Layer
The real estate market is long overdue for structural change — and not just in pricing or interest rates. What it desperately needs is an infrastructure layer built around trust.
When I say infrastructure, I’m not talking about new sales platforms or mortgage calculators. Those already exist. What’s missing is a system that monitors and validates the quality of transactions and agreements at every stage.
Think about how healthcare has evolved under regulatory frameworks like HIPAA and HITRUST. Or how fintech firms now operate within defined controls and audit regimes. These industries recognized that without trust and accountability, the entire system collapses.
Real estate has no equivalent.
Right now, you have:
• Credit-building apps (Credit Karma, Experian Boost) to help with your score.
• Mortgage pre-approval tools to show what you can afford.
• Home search platforms (Zillow, Redfin) to find listings.
But there’s no dedicated infrastructure layer focused on transaction integrity and trust management.
No one helping buyers evaluate whether a contract protects their rights.
No one flagging conflicts of interest.
No one verifying that service providers are living up to their agreements.
No one providing neutral, independent risk assessments.
That’s where I believe true innovation lies.
Introducing the Idea of a High-Trust Mortgage Readiness App
I’m currently developing a concept for a mortgage readiness infrastructure app designed to address this exact gap. The goal isn’t to replace agents, brokers, or inspectors — it’s to create an independent, data-driven platform that empowers buyers with the information and context they need to make safer decisions.
Features could include:
• Contract clause analyzers to flag risky terms or obligations.
• Vendor reputation scoring based on documented outcomes, not just reviews.
• Transaction integrity checklists tailored to your property type and market.
• Risk dashboards showing potential legal, financial, or operational issues in real-time.
• Post-sale compliance reminders to track warranties, permits, and contractor obligations.
In short — a system that treats real estate transactions with the same rigor we apply to regulated industries.
Trust Is the Real Currency
At the end of the day, businesses don’t run on money alone. They run on trust. Every contract, every customer relationship, every handshake agreement ultimately relies on the belief that the other party will act in good faith.
When that belief breaks down, the downstream costs are enormous. And those costs aren’t just financial. They’re reputational. Cultural. Emotional.
What makes this so frustrating — and why I’m so passionate about addressing it — is that the tools and frameworks to fix this already exist in other industries. We know how to create systems of trust. We just haven’t applied them here yet.
It’s time.
A Call to Business Leaders
If you’re a business leader, whether in real estate, finance, tech, or healthcare, I encourage you to ask yourself: Are you earning the trust of the people you serve? Or are you coasting on the assumption that they have no better option?
Because one way or another — whether through regulation, litigation, or innovation — the cost of broken trust will come due.
And those of us who build high-trust businesses now will be the ones who endure.
Final Thoughts
My experience as a HITRUST manager has reaffirmed something I’ve always believed: integrity isn’t a department — it’s an operating principle. Either your business lives its obligations, or it doesn’t. Either your contracts mean something, or they don’t.
Real estate, as it stands today, doesn’t. And that has to change.
Until it does, I’ll be building my own infrastructure for trust.
And I hope others will join me—