The state-of-the-art flat-fee real estate broker joined with other companies to lodge a formal complaint about unfair practices with the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department against two New Jersey-area Multiple Listing Services resulting in a reversal of the offending policy.
HACKENSACK, NJ / ACCESSWIRE / April 25, 2022 / It is with a feeling of great satisfaction that noted flat-fee real estate broker Continental Real Estate Group wishes to highlight its role in a decisive victory for consumer rights. After two New Jersey-area Realtor® association-owned Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) instituted a policy disallowing the posting of exclusive agency listings-an arrangement wherein a property owner gives a broker the exclusive right to list the property for sale, but the owner also can choose to sell the home on their own-on major home-search site Realtor.com and some other prominent real estate websites, Continental Real Estate Group and others lodged a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Justice Department citing unfair business practices and possible antitrust violations. As of the writing of this press release, the company is happy to report that the authorities have interceded and this anti-consumer policy has been withdrawn.
In a series of articles written by Glenn Roberts Jr. and published by Inman Real Estate News, the dispute and eventual resolution is outlined in detail. By means of describing why the now-rescinded MLS policy would be bad for consumers, he writes in the first article, "a decline in the number of exclusive agency listings could potentially lead to a rise in the average price of selling a home by discouraging listings that tend to have lower-than-average commission rates."
In a follow-up piece, Roberts reports what happened when Continental Real Estate Group and other flat-fee real estate brokers took action and notified the proper governing authorities. In it, he cites Gary Ragusa, owner of Realmart Realty, another New Jersey-based flat-fee real estate company, who said that he has been in contact with the FTC about the policies of some MLSs, and he believes that the FTC may have influenced the decisions by MLSs to reverse their policy on exclusive agency listings.
Further along in that same follow-up article, the author writes, "Last year, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors, charging that the trade group's policies for the sharing and display of online property listings information are too restrictive," before going to add that the "Justice Department has issued subpoenas to several MLSs related to the lawsuit, the Realtor association has announced. FTC officials have not disclosed a full list of MLSs that it has targeted in its investigations of exclusive agency listings policies, and the National Association of Realtors has also not revealed the full list of MLSs under investigation."