Nov 3, 2023
Have home owners been getting taken advantage of on commissions on sales of their home? The Missouri federal jury in Kansas City says “yes, you have” to sellers in the class a action case covering some 260,000 sales in the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois and finding liability of nearly $2 billion which could be trebled to $6 billion. Even though sellers signed agreements for paying the commissions on those sales, they’ve been losing to their agents who have been fixing (and inflating) commissions by collective agreements protecting buyer agents who often do little work to justify the commission split. Is the die now cast and will this one successful federal antitrust class action lawsuit (covering just 3 states) mean the rest of the 47 states will follow with their own lawsuits? If so, could multiple lawsuits against the real estate industry leave it vulnerable to the point of extinction? In that case, many brokers would find themselves at risk of consolidating and/or filing for bankruptcy. Today host Jack Russo and Joe Cucchiara discuss this massive disruptive change to real estate industry and the increasing future role of AI, blockchain and other digital technology in real estate transactions.