STOP NCAR

This site is about the overreaching political power of the NC Association of Realtors flush with money from cashing in your equity 6% at a time, leaving you to pay for growth with property taxes, year after year, with or without cash flow. In the last few years NCAR has pumped millions of dollars into NC political campaigns at the state and local level. They have spent millions more to defeat Local Options for Local Governments with misleading ads.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

FTC, USDOJ Antitrust Real Estate Brokerage Report Released

The Federal Trade Commission and US Department of Justice released a joint report, "Competition in the Real Estate Brokerage Industry" on Tuesday on restrictive practices in the real estate brokerage business that can prevent people from getting the best deal when buying or selling their homes.

Regulators said that discount brokers and other rivals to traditional agents have been constrained in their ability to use the Internet to reduce fees and improve service.
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The median real estate agent's commission increased 25.5 percent to $11,549 between 1998 to 2005, the report said. The FTC and DOJ called for more study of commission rates and fees and how they are affected by housing market conditions and regulation
Read about it in:
Business Week
Media Newswire
USDOJ/Antitrust: Competition Policy and the Real Estate Industry
Because real estate broker commissions are typically a percentage of the home sales price, the dollar amount charged by real estate brokers has increased significantly in recent years as home sales prices have escalated.
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The increased ease with which home buyers and sellers can perform tasks that once were the exclusive domain of real estate agents and brokers likely has been an important factor in the increased demand for innovative, non-traditional real estate brokerage services
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There are some indications that consumers are not enjoying all of the possible benefits of competition in the real estate brokerage industry. A number of developments have raised competitive concerns, particularly laws and regulations in some states that limit consumer choice of real estate brokerage service offerings and that prohibit rebates to consumers, anticompetitive agreements among brokers, and industry practices that impede competition. These practices can lead to substantial consumer harm through reduced choice of real estate brokerage services, higher fees, and limitations on the ability to access information about real estate listings.

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