Real Estate News

BUILD-TO-RENT INDUSTRY: A SMART INVESTMENT DESPITE CHALLENGES

Subsidies are essential to closing the gap between profit and loss.

Measuring the Cost of Real Estate Wire Fraud

Association Foreclosure In This Current Housing Market

Update 5-18-2023:

A controversial real estate company has been signing up thousands of Georgians for its 40-year listing agreements.

But since a Channel 2 Action News investigation in the fall, that all appears to have been put on pause.

Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray has found since our investigations into MV Realty started, there have been no new signed agreements filed here in Georgia.

Talk about the Federal Government being out of touch...

FHA approved 40-year mortgage for homebuyers in MayFHA approved 40-year mortgage for homebuyers in May

The Federal Housing Administration announced it's increasing term options to include a 40-year mortgage in May. Dan O'Connell, a Valley mortgage broker with OC Home Loans, works with people looking to buy homes or refinance. "The short term is just that you're going to get a lower payment and a payment that you can afford," he said.

U.S. real estate brokerages must face home sellers’ class action over commissions

A federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday ruled that home sellers accusing the National Association of Realtors and a group of real estate brokerages of conspiring to inflate commission rates can move forward as a class action.

U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood's decision grants class-action status to past home sellers seeking more than $13 billion in damages and creates a separate class of current and future sellers who want a court injunction that bars subsequent violations of U.S. antitrust law.

The lawsuit challenges a requirement that sellers make "blanket unilateral offers of compensation" to buyers' brokers when a home goes on sale via a multiple listing service. That system puts pressure on sellers to offer high commissions to attract buyers' brokers, the sellers claimed.

The class seeking money damages includes certain home sellers who paid a commission between March 2015 and December 2020 in states including Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado, court filings show.

My comments: sellers enlist listing brokers and are given the opportunity to agree or disagree with total commission rates to pay for the sale of their properties…its the approach that listing agents discuss options of not paying the total commission or different rate…did these agents and brokers give the sellers an option or did they force them into a standard fixed rate?

Question: Will this class action lawsuit end up paying more to attorneys than plaintiffs?