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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

#191

Post by sahila »

scarface_74 wrote: post #57
fma wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Add to the fact if you're a seller agent the money is easy. A buyer's agent struggle. AFAIK usually you start out as a buyer's agent and build up a network/reputation before people trust you to sell. In a seller's market, seems like a buyer's agent should be compensated more because it's more difficult to win bids now.

Not every inch of America is in such a competitive market.

Sure, but then the logical step is to compensate for the realtors time as opposed to some national average.

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

#192

Post by salamanderss »

ethbr1 wrote: post #110
mholm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The municipality is on their side because they're overworked. In even the smallest town, if any appreciable percentage of new builds required custom handling... the system would instantly be person-starved and start backing up. Business-as-usual is the fast/efficient path from a paperwork standpoint. Anything odd is (a) discouraged and (b) looked at with annoyance because it takes more time. One reason it's almost al…

My town solved the guilty until proven innocent issue regarding permits by just giving people carte blanche. Imo this is far more rational: if the county can't/won't verify paperwork they should default towards freedom and let the property owner have at it rather than presuming guilt and saying you haven't the money/people to check it.

Granted people aren't rich where I live so we'd rather them live in potentially a subpar house and maybe have it fall in on them than be homeless and die from the elements.

Re below: USA / Arizona. Pick the right county and no code inspections.

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

#193

Post by lloyddobbler »

aeternum wrote: post #184
OJFord wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is 'buying agents'. Looks totally bonkers from over here (UK, I think it's foreign to at least most of Europe too).

Yes, this is where the collusion comes in. Many seller agents will simply ignore buyers without a buying agent.

In the U.S., at least, I've never known a seller's agent to do that (having done a good number of real estate transactions). In fact, in my experience I find it to be the exact opposite. Seller's agents are incentivized to not work with buyer's agents, if the situation arises where they're approached directly by a buyer.

If the seller's agent is comfortable acting as the intermediary, and recognizing the limits of conflict of interest, then it's in their best interest to keep all of the 6% commission instead of giving half of it to the buyer's agent.

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

#194

Post by plagiarist »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #92
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.

The incentive for the agent selling the $2M house is to price it to sell so they can move on to get their cut of the next $2M sale.

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

#195

Post by seattle_spring »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #92
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.

    min(5000, House.price * 0.03)

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

#196

Post by Wytwwww »

bluGill wrote: post #139
Kirby64 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just don't sign a contract where you give a buyers agent commission, although again this limits the pool. Frankly, buyers agents are largely a scam in my view. With MLS, Zillow, Redfin, etc, their 'experience' seems mostly worthless. It certainly is not worth 3% of the cost of a house. If anything, sellers agents are more useful since they actually offer something valuable to the real estate experience (e.g., lis…

Buyers agents know better how to search the MLS system (though only a few do this). They also line up times to see houses, and take time to drive you to each. So a good buyers agent has spent about 8 hours of time to each buyer, plus expenses. I agree they are getting far too much, but they still are valuable.

> but they still are valuable.

All of those things seem to be pretty simple and worth barely of fraction of $2000 per hour (if they actually only spend 8 hours in total? I mean at that point it might make sense to spend 40-80 hours to do the same things yourself instead depending on your income).

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

#197

Post by losteric »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #92
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.

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

That sounds very last-century... kinda like selling antiques to a pawn shop or consignment store that would take of finding a buyer.

Why does discovery and bidding justify $200k in overhead for the $2MM property? Why does a person need to go out and "find a buyer"?

Without this Realtor conspiracy, surely something like Redfin meets eBay would be more efficient? Posting online is what the cast majority of realtors do anyway, they don't actually "find" buyers... At least until you get to 1%er prices where golf club chats matter

Heck, this racket gates even access to standardized legal forms that states themselves should freely offer.

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

#198

Post by autoexec »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #169
LeafItAlone wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your list of “mind-boggling” items all seem extremely reasonable to me. Your city and neighbors don’t want to be responsible for or have to deal with your house falling down because it was improperly constructed. And having lived in neighborhoods with septic systems most of my life, a little neglect can go a long way. Unless you’re building in the middle of nowhere (far from anything labeled a “city”), there are obli…

> Your city and neighbors don’t want to be responsible for or have to deal with your house falling down because it was improperly constructed. Why on earth would the city or the neighbors be "responsible" for that?

If my neighbor doesn't wire their home to code and it burns down and the fire spreads to my house it doesn't matter who is "responsible", I'd still lose my stuff (or my life).

Hell, if my neighbor's tree falls into my property and causes damages I can't be sure I'd be fully compensated for my losses. You can take someone to court, but they can't give you what they don't have.

People also just don't want to live in slums filled with run down barely standing shacks since it hurts their property value too. Part of living in a community means giving consideration to other people around you. The closer you are to others the more responsibility you have to be considerate of your impacts on those others.

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

#200

Post by salamanderss »

autoexec wrote: post #198
Turing_Machine wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your city and neighbors don’t want to be responsible for or have to deal with your house falling down because it was improperly constructed. Why on earth would the city or the neighbors be "responsible" for that?

If my neighbor doesn't wire their home to code and it burns down and the fire spreads to my house it doesn't matter who is "responsible", I'd still lose my stuff (or my life). Hell, if my neighbor's tree falls into my property and causes damages I can't be sure I'd be fully compensated for my losses. You can take someone to court, but they can't give you what they don't have. People also just don't want to live in sl…

How many lives of man hours are lost from overhead for these costs and compliance? The issue is people enforcing these regulations see the dead bodies from the burned out home but not the dead bodies of the homeless or the kids with less food or the dude with untreated cancer because regulatory costs and materials safety margins sucked away money that could've been spent on other life critical things.

At this point it seems completely plausible more lives would be saved through complete deregulation including setting loose uncle joe the methhead electrician.

RE:

>cities to turn into dangerous shanty towns where anyone who can lean a piece of corrugated sheet metal against a mud pile can call themselves a home builder.

My whole county did this. No inspections or building plans. It turned out fine. I became a legal 'home builder' with nothing more than filing my signature with the county. It's the only way I can even afford a house.

re county: believe the options are unincorporated burrows of Alaska, greenlee or cochise Arizona, Jackson Wayne and several other county in Tennessee, bunch of others.

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