Meet Me at the Mouth of Truth: Real Estate’s Twilight Hour

The Moment Between Chaos and Compliance

By Summer Goralik

This article was also published to Summer's Substack which you may find here.

I hadn’t been to Europe since 2007. I hate flying, so an overseas voyage is never that enticing to me. But eventually, my husband managed to get me and my ten-year-old son on a plane, and we found ourselves in Paris and Rome—two cities that greet you with a very specific kind of beauty coupled with a splash of chaos.

What began as a little travel story gave rise to something sharper, perhaps wiser. With fresh eyes, I can see the twilight hour more clearly now, that sliver of time where true character and professional judgment are tested.

The following is based on real events, one legendary landmark, and a compelling French idiom.

(I hope you see what I see.)

Beauty in Chaos

Europe is a beautiful place, special on multiple levels, in part simply because it’s unique. It has a vibe, its own feel, with historic places and buildings lining the streets in a way you just don’t see in Los Angeles.

Even the noise is eclectic and memorable—honking, shouting, music, laughing, chatter in different languages, scooters buzzing by. It becomes the vibrant soundtrack to your trip, and I assure you, once the silence returns, you actually miss the rhythmic baseline.

The traffic defies every expectation of order. As a compliance professional, I found it mildly offensive (and I say that with a smile). In hindsight, I’m not sure what I feared more: flying, or the competitive driving that is Ubering in Europe. At one point, our Uber driver shot up one of the narrowest streets in Rome. If a single pedestrian had stepped even an inch toward the middle of the road, we would have clipped them.

But that’s the crazy thing: pedestrians, locals and tourists alike, walked into the streets with confidence. And even though it feels as if everyone is racing toward the same stop sign, no one crashes.

Another constant was the cigarette smoke. It drifted through restaurants and hallways, always managing to find its way into my hotel room. One night, I was sitting near a pregnant woman in a café while several of her friends lit up around her, just one of those things you don’t often see back home.

Every line to visit a landmark was long and wrapped around corners. And often, you weren’t sure if you were even standing in the right spot or just huddled with a group of strangers for no reason.

Honestly, these were the chaotic beats, clearly non-compliant in some ways. And still, Paris and Rome offered so much relentless beauty that you forgave them instantly.

From the food to the iconic architecture, the unspoken etiquettes, the bustling economy where every restaurant on every corner is packed to the brim, to the timeless art and stories—you can’t help but be drawn to their way of life.

On the subject of beauty and chaos, little did I know that a slab of ancient marble would illuminate the defining divide where honesty and consequence meet.

“If you put your hand in the Mouth of Truth and tell a lie…”

From a very young age, my son and I have spent an unusual amount of time talking about one landmark in Rome: the Bocca della Verità or the Mouth of Truth. He’d read about it, watched videos, replayed the infamous scene from Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck (he loves old movies), and built this palpable mythology around it in his mind.

And then suddenly we were there—standing before the centuries-old stone carving that, according to legend, bites the hand of any liar.

My son hesitated, and with good reason. He’s quite the colorful storyteller these days, as fiction is up about 25% in our household. I even teased him, telling him I wasn’t entirely sure how he’d fare. He laughed, but he also paused. You could see the wheels turning in his little head. In fact, if it weren’t adorable, it would have been concerning.

In our minds, we expected the Mouth of Truth to be monstrous. Real life, not so much. It sits in the portico of the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, directly across from the Temple of Hercules Victor which is one of the oldest buildings in Rome. And curiously, there was no line at the temple, while a long, winding line wrapped around the church just to see this mysterious monument.

The Mouth of Truth—a massive, nearly 2,000-year-old marble disk often believed to depict Oceanus, a sea titan god—is far eerier in person than in photographs. Historians still debate its origins. One explanation is particularly interesting; it’s believed to have once served as a drain cover in the neighboring temple (that has an open ceiling, or oculus) for funneling rainwater from above.

Surprisingly, the real power of this ancient object isn’t really the myth itself. What I came to realize is that it’s precisely the moment right before your hand goes in.

The experience is more like a personal gut check as the mental questions start rolling in: Have I been honest? Am I about to be found out? It’s reminiscent of the internal audit kids run on themselves just around Christmastime. An instinctive self-evaluation that determines how confidently (or cautiously) your hand moves toward the opening.

Later, lying in my hotel room while recalling the day, something hit me:

If the Mouth of Truth stood at the center of our industry, how many professionals would dare place their hand inside? And what would that moment right before look like?

Where the Story Turns

The Mouth of Truth in our industry isn’t carved from stone, and it won’t snap your hand off if you’re dishonest (good news for the bad actors out there). Our modern-day truth-tellers are far more human: the government regulator reviewing a case, the judge weighing testimony, or the DRE investigator asking the hard questions.

But the Mouth of Truth can just as easily be someone who listens to your admissions and gives you an honest evaluation. It might be a less adversarial voice of clarity: an attorney clarifying what the law demands, a broker or supervisor asking the hard questions, or a colleague who tells you the truth regardless of what you want to hear.

And yes, by that definition, sometimes I become the Mouth of Truth for my clients. When someone hires me, they’re placing their activities, missteps, stories, and ultimately their trust in my hands. They want me to tell them the truth—what’s right, what’s wrong, how they’ll fare and where the risks lie.

Put another way, they want the truth before someone else, someone with actual enforcement power, delivers it far less gently.

What I realized on my European adventure is that we need a Mouth of Truth. It keeps professionals aligned on the right side of the law and the right side of the consumer. It’s as much about prevention as it is about discipline. And if innate ethics don’t rise to the occasion, then yes, it’s the threat of the hammer, the license discipline, or the lawsuit that keeps people honest.

But as I thought about this more, the idea took on a new shape. The Mouth of Truth in real estate isn’t a single authority or person at all. It may be something wholly different. Perhaps the “Mouth of Truth” is essentially a moment of truth—where you choose to comply, or don’t.

Maybe it’s those defining points, the ones where a fundamental decision determines whether you land on the side of compliance or, on the not-so-compliant flip side, even veer toward chaos.

Let’s journey further and see how this thought develops.

Twilight: The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

In keeping with my European theme, there’s a French expression I love: the hour between the dog and the wolf. It creatively depicts twilight—when the light shifts and you can’t quite tell whether the shape ahead is harmless or threatening, a friend or foe, safety or danger.

In real estate, that twilight hour could be the juncture when an agent chooses between the right or wrong path. In that instant, they either step into compliance or drift toward violating the very laws they were sworn to uphold. There lies the point where they choose to protect their client or undermine them.

The weight of these choices often reveals itself through questions such as:

• Should I disclose this?

• Should I fix this now or later?

• Should I tell my broker what really happened?

• Should I put this referral fee in writing?

They sit in the same charged space as the hour between dog and wolf—just before the hand reaches into the Mouth of Truth. The consequences may not take a hand, but they can certainly impact a career.

Coincidentally, much of my compliance work happens in that twilight realm. I work with clients during these crucial times, helping them recognize when the wolf is closer than they think. I root for the safer path, always, but I can’t force it. Professionals must choose for themselves, ideally before the consequences choose them.

Stepping back, the bigger picture becomes clear: the twilight hour is not only a crossroads but a waiting game, between chaos and compliance, and it has become far less private.

With lawsuits mounting, public threats flying, NAR facing industry-wide pressure, and MLSs reorganizing, every agent in America is confronting these moments of truth under heightened scrutiny from multiple directions. The unraveling of old industry practices is revealing who stands on the side of good faith and who is still operating with less noble intentions.

And in the twilight hour of real estate, before the Mouth of Truth, we now find private listing networks. Will they be deemed a breach of fiduciary duty and eventually cut off? Or will they be granted yet another pass?

Take referral-fee disclosure, something I’ve discussed for years. It now sits squarely at the forefront of the industry, a reckoning of sorts. Licensees find themselves in that murky hour between day and night, deciding whether to comply or wait for judgment.

If you ask me, though, the writing is on the wall, and it has been for quite some time. Perhaps it is a marble disk waiting to bite. You would be a fool to pretend you cannot see it.

What the Wolf Taught Me

Returning to my tale in Europe, I did find beauty in chaos. I also witnessed something more than just a legend attached to an ominous statue. I saw it: the instant right before you extend your hand and how it can be one of beauty, grounded in confidence and honesty, or one of chaos, marked by fear and guilt.

That brief pause, between what you know and what you fear, is where the truth already lives. And ultimately, it will be resolved only by the integrity of your actions and the record of your conduct.

Arguably, the Mouth of Truth was not created to punish liars; it was designed to keep people honest in the first place—to prevent the slow evolution of the wolf.

If my message to licensees is not clear, let it be now: be thoughtful in your practice in every way, especially before the twilight hour descends. Look carefully at the areas that aren’t in the hot seat yet, the parts of your business that have not had to face their own Mouth of Truth. Evaluate them. Shore them up where needed. Abide by the law and leave no stone unturned.

Plainly speaking, do all of the things that make you an honest and trustworthy professional, maybe even a better human.

More eloquently speaking, the picture of compliance is the hand that goes in willingly because you already know you did the right thing when it counted, as a professional and as a human.

(And voilà! There you have it. I hope you saw what I saw. But if the truth escaped you, toujours vers la lumière — always toward the light.)

About Summer

Summer Goralik is a Real Estate Compliance Consultant and licensed Real Estate Broker (#02022805). Summer offers real estate brokers a variety of consulting services including assistance with California Department of Real Estate investigations and audit preparation, mock audits, brokerage compliance guidance, advertising review, and training. She helps licensees evaluate their regulatory compliance and correct any non-compliant activities. Summer has an extensive background in real estate which includes private sector, regulatory and law enforcement experience. Prior to opening her consulting business in 2016, she worked for the Orange County District Attorney's Office as a Civilian Economic Crimes Investigator in their Real Estate Fraud Unit. Before that, Summer was employed as a Special Investigator for the DRE for six years. Among many achievements, she wrote several articles for the DRE, which still live on the Department's website today. Prior to her career in government and law enforcement, Summer also worked in the escrow industry for nearly five years. For more information about Summer's background and services, please visit her website.