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Anonymous ID: 7111e7 Feb. 5, 2024, 3:53 p.m. No.20363566   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>3584 >>3708 >>3795 >>3810

Real estate brokerage to pay $70 MILLION to settle nationwide lawsuits over grossly inflated broker's fees - has the bubble burst for greedy realtors?

17:11 EST, 5 February 2024

 

One of the nation's biggest real estate brokerages has agreed to pay $70 million to resolve a lawsuit over inflated agent commissions.

 

Keller Williams Realty will pay the sum and also take several steps to provide homebuyers and sellers with more transparency over real estate commissions.

 

The Austin-based agency will add the money to a settlement fund which will be distributed by the courts. Home sellers who sold a property from a Multiple Listing Service (MLS) between 2015 and 2019 may be eligible for a slice of the fund.

 

The bumper settlement resolves more than a dozen lawsuits across the country over commissions that US real estate agents charge.

 

In some cases, they can be as high as 6 percent - around double the global average.

 

Attorney Michael Ketchmark, who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, hailed the development as a 'tremendous victory for homeowners and homebuyers across the country.'

 

The central claim put forth in the litigation is that the country´s biggest real estate brokerages engage in practices that unfairly force homeowners to pay artificially inflated agent commissions when they sell their home.

 

In October, a federal jury in Missouri found that trade body National Association of Realtors and several large real estate brokerages, including Keller Williams, conspired to require that home sellers pay homebuyers' agent commission in violation of federal antitrust law.

 

The jury ordered the defendants to pay almost $1.8 billion in damages. If treble damages - which allows plaintiffs to potentially receive up to three times actual or compensatory damages - are awarded, then the defendants may have to pay more than $5 billion.

 

More than a dozen similar lawsuits are pending against the real estate brokerage industry.

 

The suit has provoked controversy from the industry, with one report estimating up to 80 percent of realtors would lose their jobs.

 

Real estate agent Desirae Wykoff, 36, told DailyMail.com last year: 'I feel like realtors are getting an unfair reputation from this.

 

'I could see a lot of these people hanging up their license.'

 

Keller Williams' executive chairman Gary Keller said the firm had 'full confidence in the strength of an appeal' but that a settlement would remove extended uncertainty for its agents and franchisees. The ruling also means the firm cannot be roped into copycat lawsuits.

 

'We came to the decision to settle with careful consideration for the immediate and long-term well-being of our agents, our franchisees and the business models they depend on,' Keller said in a company-wide email.

 

'It was a decision to bring stability, relief and the freedom for us all to focus on our mission without distractions.'

 

The company based operates more than 1,100 offices with some 180,000 agents.

 

Among the terms of its proposed settlement, Keller Williams agreed to make clear that its agents let clients know that commissions are negotiable, and that there isn´t a set minimum that clients are required to pay, nor one set by law.

 

The company also agreed to make certain that agents who work with prospective homebuyers disclose their compensation structure, including any "cooperative compensation,' which is when a seller´s agent offers to compensate the agent that represents a buyer for their services.

 

As part of the settlement, which must be approved by the court, Keller Williams agents will no longer be required to be members of the National Association of Realtors or follow the trade association´s guidelines.

 

Two other large real estate brokerages agreed to similar settlement terms last year. In their respective pacts, Anywhere Real Estate Inc. agreed to pay $83.5 million, while Re/Max agreed to pay $55 million.

 

In recent years, acquiring a real estate license has become a popular side hustle for Americans. In 2020 and 2021 - when the pandemic forced many out of work - a record 156,000 people became Realtors, according to the NAR.

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/housing-market/article-13047183/real-estate-fees-settlement.html

Anonymous ID: 7111e7 Feb. 5, 2024, 4:06 p.m. No.20363631   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>3708 >>3795 >>3810

Philly sheriff posts flattering but phony headlines to campaign site — then offers odd disclaimer when caught

Feb. 5, 2024, 4:41 p.m. ET

 

The Philadelphia sheriff’s team posted a series of flattering but phony news headlines on her campaign website – then issued a nonchalant disclaimer when its fake-news scheme was exposed.

 

Democrat Rochelle Bilal’s first term was marred by accusations that her office lost scores of guns, tried to misuse funds to double her salary and hired a top deputy who moonlights as a defense lawyer — but visitors to her campaign website are met with glowing headlines about her accomplishments.

 

The only problem is: those articles don’t exist, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

 

The supposed headlines came from reputable local outlets like NBC10, CBS3, WHYY and the Inquirer, but they were removed from the site Friday after the newspaper reached out for comment because it was unable to verify any of the headlines as authentic, the report said.

 

By Monday afternoon, the campaign had reposted the supposed headlines to its website, accompanied by a disclaimer that said it makes “no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information provided.”

 

Only three of the items — all press releases from the sheriff’s office — had clickable links.

 

The fake article names combined with their supposed outlets of publication did not turn up any hits on Google News — as legitimate archived digital articles should — when searched by The Post.

 

An NBC10 spokesperson reportedly said that none of the 12 supposed articles credited to the outlet about “her November 2019 election, police reform initiatives, distribution of free gun locks, suspension of evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, or tips for domestic abuse survivors,” could be located by digital editors.

 

Stories that did loosely match the content of articles the campaign site boosted about had different headlines and publication dates, according to the report.

 

Bilal did not respond to requests for comment from the paper, and her spokeswoman said the issue would have to be addressed by her campaign manager. But the spokeswoman was reportedly unable to identify the manager.

 

Neither Bilal’s office nor campaign immediately responded to a request for comment from The Post.

 

Watchdogs hypothesized that the campaign had used artificial intelligence to fabricate the headlines, which they said could lead the public to be more untrusting of both elected officials and the media.

 

Voters bombarded with fake news “just assume everything is a lie,” Peter Loge, who leads the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, told the outlet.

 

“That is dangerous.”

 

“You just keep spewing stuff out and it fatigues people and they don’t know what to believe,” Matthew Jordan, professor of media studies and director of Penn State’s News Literacy Initiative, told the Inquirer.

 

“This works in that kind of environment, where people are exhausted and nobody is going to check anymore,” Jordan said. “Most people are probably looking at this on their phones and just scrolling along.”

 

Most of the scrapped headlines had elements of truth and seemed believable, according to the paper.

 

A fake WHYY headline with a publication date of March 16, 2020 reportedly read, “Philly Sheriff’s Office Announces Temporary Halt to Evictions Amid Coronavirus Outbreak.”

 

A day earlier, the outlet had published a story entitled “Philadelphia halts evictions as coronavirus bears down,” but neither Bilal or her office was mentioned in it, according to the report.

 

“That is how misinformation works,” Kelly McBride, who chairs the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, told the paper. “It has to be believable. It has to be plausible. That’s what’s so insidious about it.”

 

Other articles appeared to be complete works of fiction, including a supposed Jan. 29, 2020 Inquirer article headlined: “Philly sheriff’s office to digitize sheriff sale process, reduce confusion and fraud.”

 

The newspaper said it did not publish any pieces about about Bilal or her office on or around that date.

 

https://nypost.com/2024/02/05/news/philly-sheriff-posts-flattering-but-phony-headlines-to-campaign-site-then-offers-odd-disclaimer-when-caught/