When we speak of real property we use the words in their technical legal sense. When we speak of real estate as a commodity and as a business, it embraces the various parts of the business which engage the attention of those who follow it as a vocation, and includes interests which in the eye of the law are not real property, as for example, leases, mortgages, etc. Every business can be conducted
upon a plane ethically as high as the ideals of any profession, and the men who have been conspicuously successful in the real estate business have attained success because they have applied to their business the highest ideals of commercial fair dealing. This does not mean that there is any ethical requirement for the seller or the purchaser to give away anything which belongs to him, or for either one to disclose to the other his necessity for selling or his requirements for buying; but the bargain having been made, it is absolutely necessary that it be lived up to by both parties, according to its intent; and, if there be any doubt of the intent of the bargain as it is expressed in writing, that the spirit of the transaction be carried out rather than that the catch words of a written instrument should govern. Cases are frequent of men who to their own detriment perform the thing which they have promised to do although not legally obligated, and the bigger and more successful the man who makes the promise the more surely will it be carried out. Important obligations are often incurred upon the mere promise of a well-known man to sell an important piece of property at a definite price, although no legal and enforcible obligation exist ; and the promise is always redeemed if it is made by a man who knows the business, and it is redeemed not merely from altruistic motives, but also for purely business reasons.
