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Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

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Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#91

Post by idontpost »

jandrese wrote: post #48
notaustinpowers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it is very high. Although, the real estate industry in the US is vastly different. - Agents do not receive salary, benefits, etc. Their only payment is when they close a deal. - Real Estate Agents are a dime a dozen since the licensing and training is pretty minimal. So lots of competition fighting over small supply, so it can be difficult to consistently get clients. - Agents can pay around $100/month to their…

Yeah, it's tough on both sides. Competition is fierce for leads, but the rates have to be sky high to support the enormous mass of realtors. If the fees drop a lot of people are going to need to find new jobs.

[dead]

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#92

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

stuff4ben wrote: post #5

Commission based on home value is a joke. Realtors should earn a flat-rate.

If you're selling a $2M house, you're willing to pay more for someone to get you a good price.

On the flip side, no one is going to pay $5k to sell a $30k house.

Flat rates don't make sense. Maybe you think the percentage is too high.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#93

Post by trey-jones »

RHSeeger wrote: post #59
rubymancer wrote: post #7

There's not much to the article. > KANSAS CITY, Mo.—A federal jury on Tuesday found the National Association of Realtors and large residential brokerages liable for about $1.8 billion in damages after determining they conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high. > The verdict comes in the first of two major antitrust lawsuits that target decades-old industry practices and seek to drive down commiss…

I bought a few years back and we didn't really use an agent to find the house at all. Looking into it, I found that a certain percentage of the sale amount goes to pay the agent(s); 6% I think. If there are two agents, they each get half. If one person doesn't use an agent... the other person's agent gets it all. The person without an agent doesn't get to keep their half... it just all goes to the other agent. Wtf...…

It's like this throughout the real estate and real estate development industries to be honest. Building my own house I expected plenty of savings over buying (and to be fair, I still did of course), but even beyond permitting (which is also more about who you know than what you know) I encountered things like this (roughly from most mind-boggling to least):

- You can't build a septic system, you have to use sewer because you're in city limits (later rescinded when they realized they would have to pump my sewage up to the city sewer.

- You need to hire an engineer to make sure your lumber is ok (we milled our own lumber)

- You need to hire an architect to make sure your plans are ok

- You didn't finish in 6 months? Buy a new permit please.

I know there were a million more things like this, but it's been over ten years and some things you don't want to remember... Contractors act like I'm taking food out of their kids' mouths by wanting to do the work myself, and the municipality is on their side.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#94

Post by bitbckt »

FireBeyond wrote: post #49
scottwick wrote: post #41

Not really related to the article but something I've been wondering... In recent years the housing market has been so competitive that escalation clauses are often written into offers. They typically include a base offer of $X and then an agreement to escalate that value by increments (maybe $1-5k at a time) up to some cap. All the offers are collected by a certain date and then an auction is run behind the scenes by…

Very little. When I was younger growing up in Australia, auctions were very common, and it was very much the "traditional" model, everyone stands around in front of the property and puts up their hand to bid. Regularly auctioneers would get caught taking bids from trees or vehicles to push prices up. They'd get caught when their fake bid was the highest. It became so common it was almost expected, and reforms to the…

This is called "chandelier bidding" in industry parlance.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#95

Post by plorkyeran »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #73
ransom1538 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just sell it / or buy it yourself. It isn't hard by any stretch. You can use a $200 listing broker on a MLS site. That is the big secret. Then it gets on zillow,redfin, etc automatically.

That doesn't help. The seller does not save money unless BOTH buyer and seller have no real estate agent. If the buyers have a real estate agent and the seller does not, the seller pays the buyer's real estate agent double their usual payment - at least in the 3 states where I've sold properties.

That is not a state law thing. All that matters is the specific contracts you have with your agent and with the buyer. If you're working with an agent they'll nearly always require the standard 6% split between agents, but if you are not then the buyer's agent commission is something that can be negotiated just like any other clause of the contract.

It also just doesn't really matter. What you care about as a seller is that you get the most net money for your house. If one of the buyers wants to have 6% of the money they're paying you go to their agent, that just means their offer needs to be that much higher than a buyer who doesn't have you paying their agent as much.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#96

Post by dminor »

RHSeeger wrote: post #59
rubymancer wrote: post #7

There's not much to the article. > KANSAS CITY, Mo.—A federal jury on Tuesday found the National Association of Realtors and large residential brokerages liable for about $1.8 billion in damages after determining they conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high. > The verdict comes in the first of two major antitrust lawsuits that target decades-old industry practices and seek to drive down commiss…

I bought a few years back and we didn't really use an agent to find the house at all. Looking into it, I found that a certain percentage of the sale amount goes to pay the agent(s); 6% I think. If there are two agents, they each get half. If one person doesn't use an agent... the other person's agent gets it all. The person without an agent doesn't get to keep their half... it just all goes to the other agent. Wtf...…

We used a real estate lawyer instead of an agent and the seller worked it out with their agent to keep the 3%. The seller's agent told us that's what ended up making our bid the most attractive.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#97

Post by xyzelement »

RHSeeger wrote: post #59
rubymancer wrote: post #7

There's not much to the article. > KANSAS CITY, Mo.—A federal jury on Tuesday found the National Association of Realtors and large residential brokerages liable for about $1.8 billion in damages after determining they conspired to keep commissions for home sales artificially high. > The verdict comes in the first of two major antitrust lawsuits that target decades-old industry practices and seek to drive down commiss…

I bought a few years back and we didn't really use an agent to find the house at all. Looking into it, I found that a certain percentage of the sale amount goes to pay the agent(s); 6% I think. If there are two agents, they each get half. If one person doesn't use an agent... the other person's agent gets it all. The person without an agent doesn't get to keep their half... it just all goes to the other agent. Wtf...…

It doesn't sound like you negotiated well and is a sign you could use an agent :)

But seriously, imagine you and I are both bidding $1,000,000 on a house. You have an agent, so if your bid is accepted, your agent and the sellers agent each get $30,000.

I don't have an agent. In my offer, I write "the sellers agent gets the usual 3%, and I am allocating the 3% that the buyer's agent would get towards the seller instead." That means for the seller's agent there's no difference whether I use an agent or not, but to the seller themselves, my offer looks $30,000 better than yours because I am sweetening the deal using that $ I'd otherwise give my realtor.

All that said, I used a realtor on my house purchase despite being financially savvy and a good negotiator because they actually helped us find the right house, and they were well worth the fee.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#98

Post by _ea1k »

scarface_74 wrote: post #52
ejb999 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - especially for the last few years, when in order to sell a house all you had to do was put in on the market - and then get 10-15-20 offers at or above listing price - no agent deserves a 6% commission for simply getting something listed on zillow or MLS where in recent years, the houses just sold themselves.

That’s only true if you are in a competitive market. There is a whole swath of land in flyover country and rural America where it can take awhile to sell a house.

Is that still the case? I feel like rural markets have really boomed in the last few years. At least I'm seeing that in the southeast. Maybe "flyover country" is different.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#99

Post by hotnfresh »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #73
ransom1538 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just sell it / or buy it yourself. It isn't hard by any stretch. You can use a $200 listing broker on a MLS site. That is the big secret. Then it gets on zillow,redfin, etc automatically.

That doesn't help. The seller does not save money unless BOTH buyer and seller have no real estate agent. If the buyers have a real estate agent and the seller does not, the seller pays the buyer's real estate agent double their usual payment - at least in the 3 states where I've sold properties.

Buyer's agent can ask for that, sure. It's not like it's automatically that way and the seller has to agree to it.

Re: Jury Finds Realtors Conspired, Awards Nearly $1.8B in Damages

#100

Post by mholm »

trey-jones wrote: post #93
RHSeeger wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a few years back and we didn't really use an agent to find the house at all. Looking into it, I found that a certain percentage of the sale amount goes to pay the agent(s); 6% I think. If there are two agents, they each get half. If one person doesn't use an agent... the other person's agent gets it all. The person without an agent doesn't get to keep their half... it just all goes to the other agent. Wtf...…

It's like this throughout the real estate and real estate development industries to be honest. Building my own house I expected plenty of savings over buying (and to be fair, I still did of course), but even beyond permitting (which is also more about who you know than what you know) I encountered things like this (roughly from most mind-boggling to least): - You can't build a septic system, you have to use sewer bec…

The municipality is on their side because many people who try to get variances on these things are legitimately cutting terrible corners that compromise both the safety of the inhabitants (present and future) and the neighbors. It's inconvenient, but these regulations save a lot of lives/QoL from bad/naive actors.
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