Hidden Realtor commissions could be next housing-market domino to topple as government probes MLS

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Another potential blow has been struck against the longstanding way in which real-estate agents get paid

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It’s not the first time that Justice has taken an interest in how competition gets stifled in the residential real estate market. And the April demand joins another high-profile legal case: a lawsuit filed in March which charges that real-estate brokerages and their industry group conspire to keep agent commissions artificially high.

The Justice Department has long been interested in how the various MLS operate. As MarketWatch was one of the first publications to report, last year a decade-long consent decree against NAR was lifted. That agreement was reached in 2008 after local real estate associations and listing services spent years refusing to allow listing access to upstarts like Redfin, which can tend to undermine an agent’s role in the process and engage the consumer in the house hunt.

As Rob Hahn, founder and managing partner of 7DS Associates, a real estate consultancy, put it, “the cartel has been broken when it comes to listings. Zillow has all the buyers. The moat today is the hidden information, the sold data, off-market data and agent commission.” “Ultimately the buyer is paying for it,” said Daren Blomquist, vice president of market economics at Auction.com. “It’s baked into the price of the property. How the gatekeeper of the transaction is paid is something a lot of folks don’t completely understand and that’s what’s at the heart of some of these legal actions.”

 

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Every home Ive ever bought or sold was all done WITHOUT a realtor. You dont need them anymore

It’s embarrassing

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than watching people who create 0 value get automated out of existence

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