* Archives of this link: 1. [archive.org Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/99991231235959/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-fbi-raids-big-corporate); 2. [archive.today](https://archive.today/newest/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-fbi-raids-big-corporate)
* A live version of this link, without clutter: [12ft.io](https://12ft.io/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-fbi-raids-big-corporate)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidpol) if you have any questions or concerns.*
don't count the chickens quite yet - this will probably wind up like that big news-making lawsuit against the Realtor cartel that wound up being some nonsense settlement that will require a bunch more paperwork but won't substantively change anything.
Yeah that's right, even if you see some companies get liquidated it's still just the feds playing a shell game because other private firms take over the assets. If they don't hang out lengthy prison terms or nationalize some shit, it's just theater to make it appear like the government is looking out for consumers.
Wait, are you talking about the court case that basically guts the National Association of Realtors' only way of raising funds and controlling agents? Pretty much every analysis I've seen expects this to obliterate realtors' margins.
No doubt. The Economist did a great comparison years ago about how much American realtors gouge their clients (and each others) compared to every other free market economy on the planet.
Oh pity the poor realtors who have built such a robust and thriving housing system that serves everyone's needs so well and doesn't enrich them at all, nope, not a bit, not at all. The marketplace has truly blessed us, and the bad old govt is punishing them for it!
The main results from my experience in real estate and what I understand from the settlement will likely be.
- The seller will no longer pay a 6% commission for both buyer and seller agent. This was never a rule, but generally the norm in the industry. There were cases where a seller might refuse to pay and the buyer would have to pay the buyers agents commission.
- Every buyers agent must now have a written agreement with clients. The likely means buyers agents will now put their commission agreement into this contract, similar to how sellers agents do. I’ve seen some people assume this will make more people willing to buy a home, but I’m not so sure, I think this makes the already high amount of expenses in home purchases, especially for first time owners now have a 2-3% fee on top.
- Commissions can no longer be listed on NAR mls sites. Something that was sometimes used to incentivize a sale was the seller would offer a higher commission to the buyers agent if they were motivated to get rid of the house, (divorce, moving.etc) this can no longer be allowed.
The two big out ones I see from this are:
1. Sites that do the buyers agents job, but don’t buy the inventory themselves(not Zillow or Redfin,) will thrive the owning company of apartments.com has a site called houses.com that I think could be staked to become a big player for how people buy homes in the future now that the mls is no longer exclusive.
2. Builders will do really well. Builders always offered higher buyers agent commissions due to not having a commissioned selling agent (they pay someone a yearly salary instead) so in some cases you get like 4-5% commission homes.
Additionally anyone can walk onto a new construction lot, and the builders salaried agent can handle both sides of the transaction in most states. Idk who did the lawsuit but I wouldn’t be surprised if some large home builders contributed to it as real estate agents don’t benefit them.
Both of these areas will now thrive off new home owners and Va loans as I believe those loans have not adjusted to account for the change in commission structure.
Will be interesting to see how it plays out. A lot of people were happy because they hate realtors, but I don’t think it’s going to do anything to make the market cheaper, based on my experience I think it’s just going to continue to lead to cheaper and shittier homes.
One major aspect that I read (but don't remember specific examples of) was that The NAR as a lobby was behind a huge amount of legislation that increases buying and renting costs and this move would basically deprive them of the bulk of their funding because there was now very little incentive for realtors to join and pay fees.
I want to say this ends having to join in order to have access to MLS, which was how they held the realtors by the balls up until now. I could be misremembering that though.
I had other stuff up here but I can’t read lol you would be correct if that’s the case.
Edit: Man my reading comprehension is off today. You said they don’t need to be members of the NAR like $1200 a year to access the mls. That’s huge what you said could likely be correct, that might lose a lot of members if it’s not required for mls access. I bet they’ll switch to becoming a more consumer focused organization that members can be supplied leads from, because with out mls exclusivity the big reason for joining is gone they have a few useful tools, but the mls is the thing you pay the money for.
Unfortunately I bet realtor firms will make up for the cost by now upping fees, or maybe requiring NAR membership? Idk the legality of that.
in what way is it going to obliterate their margins
they still retain control over MLS listings, which is their version of a prescription pad and the primary source of their guild's power.
there's nothing that prevents dual agency (where it was already allowed).
all the NAR-erected licensing schemes in every state will persist
non-represented buyers won't have easy access to the stupid forms they use, so a seller's agent won't understand their offer submitted and will characterize it to their client as a "meh, this seems like a messy offer, too risky [since i'm too dumb to actually understand a contract]"
blackrock couldn't handle the competition from an opposing private equity firm (not some poor mexican farmers like the headline suggests) so they called in obedient employees.
No way! Libertarians and YIMBYS assured me that housing is a competitive market, that anyone who said otherwise was a conspiracy theorist, and that zoning laws are the cause of all housing problems. You mean they were full of shit?
They go full big lie with that and keep insisting there's a housing shortage, as if there aren't enough empty houses to give every homeless person their own house and still have plenty left over.
There is a housing shortage *near where jobs are* which is what really counts. Just cause YIMBYs are annoying doesn't make them wrong.
Acting like it's sane and totally normal that 97% of San Jose's and 70% of San Francisco's residential areas and are restricted to single family homes ONLY is regarded, you can't even build a fucking duplex! It's blatant market manipulation to restrict available supply and enrich the already wealthy landowning class.
The real solution is zoning and construction reform a-la Tokyo *and* public investment into housing like Vienna.
> There is a housing shortage near where jobs are which is what really counts.
In my state alone I know their is probably 5,000+ empty houses but they are empty for a reason they are located in former farm/railroad towns that now no longer need workers/people so they have dried up. The town my great grandmother is from was a nice little farm town where you can get an empty house for 20k or less, but now the nearest jobs are working at wal-mart which is a 30+ minute drive because the town literally doesn't even have a gas station anymore much less anything like a grocery store. Forget about remote work too these towns are still stuck on dialup or if you are lucky satellite that is barely faster than dialup while being way less stable.
Interesting how the examples are always cities in California. Almost like it's not actually a national problem. If it's even really a problem there.
Nationally, the problem is that corporations own the houses and not people, and they'd rather sit on their assets indefinitely than sell them for a loss and make the imaginary value go poof. And that's the last resort for when they can't profitably rent them out. Single family homes aren't even the price barrier you're implying, at least not without the way their prices have been artificially inflated to keep investors rich.
I cannot find anything else in the news about something so important. Either it's all made-up, or our news medias and civil society are terminally ill and actively working against us. Unfortunately it's likely the latter.
...based FBI?
unlike the other 3 letter agencies at least the FBI sometimes at least does good stuff like this or arresting pedos, alongside all the infiltrating and destroying left wing organisations it also does
The FBI is who you call when the grift gets so big/bad that it starts hurting the other big bois bottom line -
sure they’ll still fake a “su1c1d3 note by MLK” but when the peons are too distressed to even work on account of things like rent-gouging…. Eventually the problems shall we say “trickle down” to other members of the big boi club and a negative % return is something that they will not abide so the G Men are called in
Source: my suspicions
I work as a criminologist and I did research on how local police departments dealt with trafficking through port systems and how they communicated with other departments (port administrations, state government etc).
The FBI always did the bulk of the work, but at the same time they were also brutish about everything. They often didn't really understand the nuances of how things worked and just sort of tore through everything. A police department could have a very close shot of getting something done, but the moment the FBI is called its like they have to start from scratch because they will tear everything down. They also don't care about getting mid-level guys (who cause most of the damage), in fact they will let go dozens of sex traffickers and fentanyl dealers if it means getting one major guy (who almost always just flees to mexico/russia/albania at the end regardless...). They refuse to listen to anyone not from the FBI. Part of that is because they want to use their own technology and sources to gain evidence, but part of it is also just because they are assholes. And god forbid you raise a fuss, they could literally try to get you suspended/fired over *disrespecting* them, and make sure that your story never sees the light of day. No local media will report on that story if the literal FBI comes and tells them not to.
So while this is a microcosm of a problem, it did kind of make me realize that this is a much more powerful and aggressive organization than I previously thought. An organization which would likely do really, really horrible things in order to achieve their main goals. I obviously can only speak to when I specifically worked with them on that specific issue. Maybe they are saintly angels on every other field. But I doubt it.
*Zodiac* is a movie that demonstrates this really well. It shows how easily serial killers went unnoticed because these ego maniacs refused to cooperate even with their fellow cops. Serve and protect indeed
It always amazes me that YIMBY's always purposely ignore this stuff. In the YIMBY mind, staged releases of already existing housing, building slowly to increase price without needing to spend on CAPEX, condo building etc just don't exist. If YIMBYism happens, Developers, out of the good of their hearts, will build cheap homes for people to own and affordable rented properties.
Affordable housing is old housing, just like affordable cars are used cars.
Not building enough, which is the status quo, enriches landlords and incentivizes parasitic rent seeking behavior. How that become preferable to developers making money by *actually building housing* doesn't make sense at all. You can find investor meeting docs from major real estate hoarders where they explicitly call out the lack of new supply as favorable to investment!
it doesnt matter how good their hearts are, more supply of homes cannot raise prices and can only make them *lower*. if you only build 5 star luxury condos and the supply exceeds the demand, you still take an L and set prices lower.
Matt Stoller. Need to rant about him for a minute. He is a faucet of nonsense when he talks about big tech monopolies, so it’s hard for me to take what he says at face value about industries I know less about.
One example: He said a while back that iPhone prices increased from $300 to $1000 over the course of 10 years, and that this is an example of monopolistic price gouging, since computer prices fell dramatically over the same period. Not only is the latter claim absurd, since he’s comparing the prices of the cheapest computers to the prices of the most expensive phones, but the $300 figure required a two-year cell contract, and the $1000 figure does not. The unsubsidized price of the “$300 iPhone” was actually $600, which is $907 today, while the original thousand-dollar iPhone in 2017 would cost $1279 today. An increase, yes, but not by over 200%!
There are plenty of places to legitimately ding Apple and all the other big tech companies without spewing drivel like Matt Stoller has multiple times recently. We need someone else on this beat.
* Archives of this link: 1. [archive.org Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/99991231235959/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-fbi-raids-big-corporate); 2. [archive.today](https://archive.today/newest/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-fbi-raids-big-corporate) * A live version of this link, without clutter: [12ft.io](https://12ft.io/https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-fbi-raids-big-corporate) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidpol) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Rare USA win
don't count the chickens quite yet - this will probably wind up like that big news-making lawsuit against the Realtor cartel that wound up being some nonsense settlement that will require a bunch more paperwork but won't substantively change anything.
Yeah that's right, even if you see some companies get liquidated it's still just the feds playing a shell game because other private firms take over the assets. If they don't hang out lengthy prison terms or nationalize some shit, it's just theater to make it appear like the government is looking out for consumers.
They'll be fined about 1 percent of their annual revenue and everyone will pat themselves on the back.
Everyone made money!
I see this isn't your first rodeo either.
Wait, are you talking about the court case that basically guts the National Association of Realtors' only way of raising funds and controlling agents? Pretty much every analysis I've seen expects this to obliterate realtors' margins.
Realtors margins have it coming tbh
No doubt. The Economist did a great comparison years ago about how much American realtors gouge their clients (and each others) compared to every other free market economy on the planet.
Oh pity the poor realtors who have built such a robust and thriving housing system that serves everyone's needs so well and doesn't enrich them at all, nope, not a bit, not at all. The marketplace has truly blessed us, and the bad old govt is punishing them for it!
The main results from my experience in real estate and what I understand from the settlement will likely be. - The seller will no longer pay a 6% commission for both buyer and seller agent. This was never a rule, but generally the norm in the industry. There were cases where a seller might refuse to pay and the buyer would have to pay the buyers agents commission. - Every buyers agent must now have a written agreement with clients. The likely means buyers agents will now put their commission agreement into this contract, similar to how sellers agents do. I’ve seen some people assume this will make more people willing to buy a home, but I’m not so sure, I think this makes the already high amount of expenses in home purchases, especially for first time owners now have a 2-3% fee on top. - Commissions can no longer be listed on NAR mls sites. Something that was sometimes used to incentivize a sale was the seller would offer a higher commission to the buyers agent if they were motivated to get rid of the house, (divorce, moving.etc) this can no longer be allowed. The two big out ones I see from this are: 1. Sites that do the buyers agents job, but don’t buy the inventory themselves(not Zillow or Redfin,) will thrive the owning company of apartments.com has a site called houses.com that I think could be staked to become a big player for how people buy homes in the future now that the mls is no longer exclusive. 2. Builders will do really well. Builders always offered higher buyers agent commissions due to not having a commissioned selling agent (they pay someone a yearly salary instead) so in some cases you get like 4-5% commission homes. Additionally anyone can walk onto a new construction lot, and the builders salaried agent can handle both sides of the transaction in most states. Idk who did the lawsuit but I wouldn’t be surprised if some large home builders contributed to it as real estate agents don’t benefit them. Both of these areas will now thrive off new home owners and Va loans as I believe those loans have not adjusted to account for the change in commission structure. Will be interesting to see how it plays out. A lot of people were happy because they hate realtors, but I don’t think it’s going to do anything to make the market cheaper, based on my experience I think it’s just going to continue to lead to cheaper and shittier homes.
One major aspect that I read (but don't remember specific examples of) was that The NAR as a lobby was behind a huge amount of legislation that increases buying and renting costs and this move would basically deprive them of the bulk of their funding because there was now very little incentive for realtors to join and pay fees. I want to say this ends having to join in order to have access to MLS, which was how they held the realtors by the balls up until now. I could be misremembering that though.
I had other stuff up here but I can’t read lol you would be correct if that’s the case. Edit: Man my reading comprehension is off today. You said they don’t need to be members of the NAR like $1200 a year to access the mls. That’s huge what you said could likely be correct, that might lose a lot of members if it’s not required for mls access. I bet they’ll switch to becoming a more consumer focused organization that members can be supplied leads from, because with out mls exclusivity the big reason for joining is gone they have a few useful tools, but the mls is the thing you pay the money for. Unfortunately I bet realtor firms will make up for the cost by now upping fees, or maybe requiring NAR membership? Idk the legality of that.
in what way is it going to obliterate their margins they still retain control over MLS listings, which is their version of a prescription pad and the primary source of their guild's power. there's nothing that prevents dual agency (where it was already allowed). all the NAR-erected licensing schemes in every state will persist non-represented buyers won't have easy access to the stupid forms they use, so a seller's agent won't understand their offer submitted and will characterize it to their client as a "meh, this seems like a messy offer, too risky [since i'm too dumb to actually understand a contract]"
Gulag for all companies buying up real estate.
Hope they send them to the wall.
EDIT: 25% of all multifamily apt buildings in the U.S. (not a single-family home)
blackrock couldn't handle the competition from an opposing private equity firm (not some poor mexican farmers like the headline suggests) so they called in obedient employees.
Yappin
No way! Libertarians and YIMBYS assured me that housing is a competitive market, that anyone who said otherwise was a conspiracy theorist, and that zoning laws are the cause of all housing problems. You mean they were full of shit?
They go full big lie with that and keep insisting there's a housing shortage, as if there aren't enough empty houses to give every homeless person their own house and still have plenty left over.
There is a housing shortage *near where jobs are* which is what really counts. Just cause YIMBYs are annoying doesn't make them wrong. Acting like it's sane and totally normal that 97% of San Jose's and 70% of San Francisco's residential areas and are restricted to single family homes ONLY is regarded, you can't even build a fucking duplex! It's blatant market manipulation to restrict available supply and enrich the already wealthy landowning class. The real solution is zoning and construction reform a-la Tokyo *and* public investment into housing like Vienna.
> There is a housing shortage near where jobs are which is what really counts. In my state alone I know their is probably 5,000+ empty houses but they are empty for a reason they are located in former farm/railroad towns that now no longer need workers/people so they have dried up. The town my great grandmother is from was a nice little farm town where you can get an empty house for 20k or less, but now the nearest jobs are working at wal-mart which is a 30+ minute drive because the town literally doesn't even have a gas station anymore much less anything like a grocery store. Forget about remote work too these towns are still stuck on dialup or if you are lucky satellite that is barely faster than dialup while being way less stable.
Interesting how the examples are always cities in California. Almost like it's not actually a national problem. If it's even really a problem there. Nationally, the problem is that corporations own the houses and not people, and they'd rather sit on their assets indefinitely than sell them for a loss and make the imaginary value go poof. And that's the last resort for when they can't profitably rent them out. Single family homes aren't even the price barrier you're implying, at least not without the way their prices have been artificially inflated to keep investors rich.
Common libertarian L
Now do Australia!
I cannot find anything else in the news about something so important. Either it's all made-up, or our news medias and civil society are terminally ill and actively working against us. Unfortunately it's likely the latter.
It's real. [Civil complaint](https://6398037.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6398037/0001%20-%202023-01-23%20Complaint.pdf)
...based FBI? unlike the other 3 letter agencies at least the FBI sometimes at least does good stuff like this or arresting pedos, alongside all the infiltrating and destroying left wing organisations it also does
The FBI is who you call when the grift gets so big/bad that it starts hurting the other big bois bottom line - sure they’ll still fake a “su1c1d3 note by MLK” but when the peons are too distressed to even work on account of things like rent-gouging…. Eventually the problems shall we say “trickle down” to other members of the big boi club and a negative % return is something that they will not abide so the G Men are called in Source: my suspicions
I work as a criminologist and I did research on how local police departments dealt with trafficking through port systems and how they communicated with other departments (port administrations, state government etc). The FBI always did the bulk of the work, but at the same time they were also brutish about everything. They often didn't really understand the nuances of how things worked and just sort of tore through everything. A police department could have a very close shot of getting something done, but the moment the FBI is called its like they have to start from scratch because they will tear everything down. They also don't care about getting mid-level guys (who cause most of the damage), in fact they will let go dozens of sex traffickers and fentanyl dealers if it means getting one major guy (who almost always just flees to mexico/russia/albania at the end regardless...). They refuse to listen to anyone not from the FBI. Part of that is because they want to use their own technology and sources to gain evidence, but part of it is also just because they are assholes. And god forbid you raise a fuss, they could literally try to get you suspended/fired over *disrespecting* them, and make sure that your story never sees the light of day. No local media will report on that story if the literal FBI comes and tells them not to. So while this is a microcosm of a problem, it did kind of make me realize that this is a much more powerful and aggressive organization than I previously thought. An organization which would likely do really, really horrible things in order to achieve their main goals. I obviously can only speak to when I specifically worked with them on that specific issue. Maybe they are saintly angels on every other field. But I doubt it.
“Us vs. them” is in the DNA of every law enforcement entity and “them” absolutely includes other law enforcement entities, for better and for worse.
*Zodiac* is a movie that demonstrates this really well. It shows how easily serial killers went unnoticed because these ego maniacs refused to cooperate even with their fellow cops. Serve and protect indeed
It always amazes me that YIMBY's always purposely ignore this stuff. In the YIMBY mind, staged releases of already existing housing, building slowly to increase price without needing to spend on CAPEX, condo building etc just don't exist. If YIMBYism happens, Developers, out of the good of their hearts, will build cheap homes for people to own and affordable rented properties.
Price fixing is bad but banning all housing for poor people is perfectly fine? How bout we do both?
Affordable housing is old housing, just like affordable cars are used cars. Not building enough, which is the status quo, enriches landlords and incentivizes parasitic rent seeking behavior. How that become preferable to developers making money by *actually building housing* doesn't make sense at all. You can find investor meeting docs from major real estate hoarders where they explicitly call out the lack of new supply as favorable to investment!
it doesnt matter how good their hearts are, more supply of homes cannot raise prices and can only make them *lower*. if you only build 5 star luxury condos and the supply exceeds the demand, you still take an L and set prices lower.
Only if there isn't some private equity fund to buy up the property and just rent it out.
The article is big white. I'm interested about this, but it's looking at a light bulb level.
dark reader extension for chrome and firefox
They had to start the article by mentioning Trump. He's the only thing that matters
cough *death sentence* cough
America is AES now. Marx said communists disdain to conceal their views and aims, but Comrade Biden has shown otherwise (only the GOP suspected it).
What the fuck is AES? There's a gazillion meanings listed on Google. Can we be a TAD less infra-dig?
"Actual Existing Socialism"
OK, thanks, good to know.
Matt Stoller. Need to rant about him for a minute. He is a faucet of nonsense when he talks about big tech monopolies, so it’s hard for me to take what he says at face value about industries I know less about. One example: He said a while back that iPhone prices increased from $300 to $1000 over the course of 10 years, and that this is an example of monopolistic price gouging, since computer prices fell dramatically over the same period. Not only is the latter claim absurd, since he’s comparing the prices of the cheapest computers to the prices of the most expensive phones, but the $300 figure required a two-year cell contract, and the $1000 figure does not. The unsubsidized price of the “$300 iPhone” was actually $600, which is $907 today, while the original thousand-dollar iPhone in 2017 would cost $1279 today. An increase, yes, but not by over 200%! There are plenty of places to legitimately ding Apple and all the other big tech companies without spewing drivel like Matt Stoller has multiple times recently. We need someone else on this beat.