An online flat-fee direct home listing service created by the New Jersey-based real estate professional is mentioned prominently in a piece featured in the nation's leading financial publication.
HACKENSACK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 9, 2022 / Derek Eisenberg, entrepreneur, real estate professional, and founder of flat-fee real estate brokerage Continental Real Estate Group, is proud to announce that BrokerDirectMLS.com, one of the websites he created and still maintains to this day, is featured prominently in an article in the Wall Street Journal. In a piece titled Discount Real Estate Brokers Spark a War Over Commissions written by James R. Hagerty, a staff reporter at the renowned newspaper, the bubbling tension between traditional commission-based real estate brokers and internet-based flat-fee brokers is laid bare. The article presents a case study of the challenges faced by one such flat-fee broker, Mrs. Sharon Jebavy of Ohio, to illustrate the conflict.
Early in the piece, the author references a suburban Cleveland homeowner who, not wanting to pay the commission fees normally associated with retaining a traditional Realtor®, "turned to Sharon Jebavy, who owns a tiny discount brokerage called HomeWise Real Estate Services, based in Columbus. For a flat fee of about $500, she places listings on the main database for brokers in any given Ohio region."
Further outlining Mrs. Jebavy's professional history, the article notes that she initially "concentrated only on her local market in the Columbus area. Then, early in 2004, she banded together with a group of flat-fee brokers that share the costs of a website and pay for Google and Yahoo search ads. People who visit the BrokerDirectMLS.com site can click on a state to find a flat-fee service near them. Mrs. Jebavy signed up to handle all of Ohio, kicking in about $2,000 a month for the network's online ad costs." The piece then goes on to state, "With a greater reach, her business volume has soared."
The article then proceeds to describe a complicated dust-up between Mrs. Jebavy and traditional real estate brokers in the region aided by the National Association Realtors involving a revision of terms for listing homes on various Ohio-based multiple listing services (MLSs), and ultimately, the involvement of attorneys and higher legal authorities, including the Justice Department. In the end, the piece depicts flat-fee brokers such as Mrs. Jebavy and Derek Eisenberg, founder of both BrokerDirectMLS.com and Continental Real Estate Group, as not only the offended parties in this conflict, but also as consumer advocates, as well as disruptors of the traditional real estate industry.