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

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251–260 of 282 posts

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

#251
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not sure why you're getting downvoted. If realtors add more value than their commission, then great. Consider normies who don't understand why all this "tech stuff" costs so much money.

The average home sale price around here is around $1M. Realtors simply do not provide $60K worth of value to the sale of one.

To me the question is what actual price I would've gotten.

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

#252
post #106

The problem isn't just realtors, it is that the whole system is designed to maximize transaction costs. Who cares how much the attorney and loan paperwork cost when they are only 1-2%, you are already paying 5-6% to realtors, ~.5-1% in repair costs, and often a part of the buyer's closing costs too? But if you think about that wholistically, that means sellers are paying 8-10% of the cost of a house every time they s…

My problem has always been with the percentages used on certain things; like commissions. Just make it a flat fee. Things that require agent's time like open houses; bill for that. It's the essentially the same effort on a $100K house and a $500K house and a $1M house. Maybe once you get to $5M+ houses the fees need to increase since this is a different class of RE with much smaller pool of buyers. But still should b…

This was the business model for PurpleBricks that exited the US market after failing to disrupt the Realtor mafia in control.

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

#253
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. I could not list the home in MLS as That system requires annual fees to use and you need to have a realtor license. Additionally, if you were to decide to list "For Sale by Owner" and market it yourself, you can submit it to the major aggregators (Zillow et al), but their contracts with the MLS systems often disallow them from mixing MLS and FSBO listings in the same search result set, so the FSBO listings are h…

Further blatant abuse of their monopoly.

Hmmm, sounds like a cartel that could be ripe for a bit of legal action. ;)

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

#254

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…

I had an escalation clause in my offer, but I adjusted it so it said something to the effect that the clause would only be in effect for comparable offers. Then I defined comparable offers to be offers that were for the same type of loan with a minimum down payment and deposit amount. I wanted to protect against the buyers getting a higher offer that they were likely to reject on some other basis, but using that higher offer to make me pay more for the house. The downside was that I could be beat out by other legitimate buyers whose escalation clause didn't consider the quality of the offer they were beating. I cared more about not feeling like I was being swindled though. I got the house after about a $10k escalation, and the seller's agent presented the competing offer so I could verify it met the conditions of my escalation clause.

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

#255
post #106

The problem isn't just realtors, it is that the whole system is designed to maximize transaction costs. Who cares how much the attorney and loan paperwork cost when they are only 1-2%, you are already paying 5-6% to realtors, ~.5-1% in repair costs, and often a part of the buyer's closing costs too? But if you think about that wholistically, that means sellers are paying 8-10% of the cost of a house every time they s…

My problem has always been with the percentages used on certain things; like commissions. Just make it a flat fee. Things that require agent's time like open houses; bill for that. It's the essentially the same effort on a $100K house and a $500K house and a $1M house. Maybe once you get to $5M+ houses the fees need to increase since this is a different class of RE with much smaller pool of buyers. But still should b…

Maybe we should all learn from real estate agents and price our labor at a % of the median home price within 1 hour commute to our offices?

While I do think RE agents are overpaid in expensive markets, I also kind of think...good for them. Pegging your wages to your most expensive living cost is a supremely intelligent move.

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

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it damages their property values. Would you want to buy a house next to a dilapidated pile of abandoned rubble?

What makes you think you're entitled to an increase in your "property value" at the expense of someone else? Maybe you should look at your house as a place to live rather than an investment vehicle. Or maybe you should just accept that investments come with risks.

No one's entitled to returns on any investment, of course. But would you expect investors to stand idly by while their investments lose ground? Or would you expect them to take whatever opportunities are available to them to protect their investments?

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a practical way to diligence theoretically unethical behavior?

Parsing the question as: - a broker with a client who is selling - to pitch buying to another broker who has a client who is buying - and for the brokers to work for the same company I don't think so? It sounds obviously ethical

More like the selling realtor “forgetting” to take a call from a competing buyers agent and keeping it in-house. It happens all of the time and cost the sellers money.

There’s also many scenarios where real estate folks steer certain ethnicities or religious practitioners away from some areas.

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

#259
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really haven’t added anything. You’ve just restated that people that own the mortgage want title insurance to protect them. It isn’t for the home owners protection. It’s the same with PMI. That’s another insurance the lender requires a buyer to purchase to protect them. Title insurance is relatively cheap compared to home or auto insurance. It’s a one time purchase cheaper than the 6 month premium of either of th…

> You really haven’t added anything. Are you intentionally glossing over that it could/should cost less than 1 month of premiums of either of the other types of insurance?

They aren't saying it's priced a little too high, they're saying it's a scam. Compared to those other insurances, it's very cheap. Over a 30 year mortgage you'll pay tens of thousands of dollars in home owners insurance. For title insurance you'll pay a few hundred dollars for the average house. For my house, which is close enough to the national average, it was about 2 months worth of home owners premiums.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parsing the question as: - a broker with a client who is selling - to pitch buying to another broker who has a client who is buying - and for the brokers to work for the same company I don't think so? It sounds obviously ethical

More like the selling realtor “forgetting” to take a call from a competing buyers agent and keeping it in-house. It happens all of the time and cost the sellers money. There’s also many scenarios where real estate folks steer certain ethnicities or religious practitioners away from some areas.

As said earlier, any and all discrimination is illegal/unethical and there are checks in place to prevent it from proliferating. Anyone who is a victim can report a HUD fair housing complaint form, contact their local state's office of fair housing, or contact their local Association of REALTORS® to report an ethics violation.

And people do report:

> The most important finding of this report is that the number of housing discrimination complaints increased significantly in 2021, despite the fact there were fewer agencies reporting complaint data. There were 31,216 housing complaints in 2021, an 8.7 percent increase over the number of complaints filed in 2020. At the same time, there were seven fewer agencies that reported data in 2021 than in 2020. Had all fair housing agencies been able to submit their data, undoubtedly the number of reported fair housing complaints would have been even higher.

https://nationalfairhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2...

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