By Jackie Beardsley
THE GREAT PERIDIGM SHIFT OF REAL ESTATE
NAR Antitrust Lawsuit - Moehrl Case
- HOME SELLERS ARE UNFAIRLY REQUIRED TO PAY BUYERS BROKER COMMISSION WITHOUT NEGOTIATION
- BUYER BROKES VALUE IS MINIMAL IF NEEDED AT ALL
- BUYER BROKERS WON'T SHOW IF COMPENSATION IS TOO LOW FORCING SELLERS TO PAY MORE
The four brokerages named are-
Re/Max
Keller Williams
Berkshire Hathaway Home Services
Anywhere
Anywhere used to be called, REALOGY, they are the parent company to many different franchises. The two largest being Century 21 and Coldwell Banker.
In March of 2023, Plaintiffs motion for class action certification in Moehrl case was granted.
A part of the evidence to make this a class action lawsuit was because a company called, REX Real Estate, who are not REALTORS® or a part of the MLS takes listings, puts the sign in front of the house and when a buyers agent would call the brokerage and ask what they compensate to the buyer brokerage they were told, they don't pay to buyers brokerages. The MLS was always the place where compensation between brokerages is offered. I personally feel this is a great system, however REX Real Estate had more than 700 agents recorded complaining they won't show the home or that they had to pay compensation, etc.
I'm not at all sure if the agents who were recorded were actually questioned but they would all need to be in order to validate they are the ones on the recording.
Being a class action law suit could mean that home sellers who paid a commission between 2015 - 2020 with a brokerage that was affiliated with a Corporate Defendant in connection with a sale of the real estate listed on a defendant MLS could be compensated.
Damages estimated at 14 to 20 billion.
Regardless of how often I have listened to the circumstances surrounding this I have a hard time understanding certain things. One of them being, why any seller would ever feel 'forced' to pay a brokerage fee. Perhaps it is the way in which certain agents may be explaining things.
Any seller at any time (at least for myself) has always been able to negotiate a commission and still can. Also, any seller at any time can sell by owner or with any other company that may offer less compensation.
As far as the buyers go, there is a tremendous amount of time and effort that goes into representation on the part of the agent. Finding a home on the Internet is only the beginning.
It takes both buyers and sellers to come together and form a partnership when it comes to the real estate transaction. Each side has their own costs. The seller has nothing without the buyer who has to put down a lot in the form of a down payment to purchase their home. Buyers are not going to have extra cash to compensate the buyers brokerage company and in the end it may make it impossible to be able to purchase.
Lenders can not roll that brokerage fee into their loan.
The MLS is the most powerful tool available to date and there is no other way for 'pocket listings' or Private Listings, to be available. It seems this is also a part of the issues that are being discussed. Is gaining control of the MLS at stake? I'm not sure why the DOJ is concerned about some of the issues I've learned, it will be interesting to see how this ends.
It would be too much to put into this blogpost as to how much agents do in a real estate transaction. I will be doing that in the near future.
No one can ever make anyone have morals when they don't. As a REALTOR®, you are bound to a very strict CODE OF ETHICS and held to a higher standard. An agent can lose their license or be fined thousands of dollars for practices that are found to be unethical.
I feel that we have an excellent system in place that has worked for a very long time, why disrupt that? Positive changes with anything is always a good thing, however, fundamentally changing a good thing for control of anything can be detrimental and harmful in the end, I'll be keeping up with this.
