Coupled and Uncoupled Realtor® Commissions

Realtor Commissions Antitrust

Realtor® commissions should be coupled to Buyer Agent Commissions (BAC) incentives, if and only if, antitrust regulations are firmly enforced.

A copy of author’s official request that asks the United States Federal Trade Commission, the United States Department of Justice, and the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to investigate possible violations of antitrust and consumer protection laws currently ratified and enforced in connection with alleged broker-to-broker market allocation, consumer allocation, false advertising, unlawful kickbacks, wire fraud, and price-fixing practices in the residential real estate brokerage sector in accordance with an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy signed by Office of the President of the United States on July 9, 2021 in an effort to promote competition across the United States economy.

Attn: Citizen Complaint Center, Antitrust Division
Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530
Attn: Office of Policy and Coordination
Bureau of Competition
Federal Trade Commission
600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Room CC-5422
Washington, DC 20580
Attn: CFPB Regulatory Implementation
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
1700 G St., NW
Washington, DC 20552

HomeOpenly is a consumer-focused homeownership platform, and it will always remain one. This seemingly common proposition is distinctly true in the increasingly broker-focused murky real estate industry. Most real estate platforms aim to serve brokers because brokers are an excellent source of revenue. Further, most of the real estate platforms today are brokers that merely claim to be unbiased platforms.

At HomeOpenly, by the virtue of our mission, everything that we do and say is to improve consumers’ homeownership experience. In other words, we don’t serve brokers, or third-party interests, we serve consumers when we allow quality competitive real estate professionals to participate in the Open Marketplace™ platform. This approach gives HomeOpenly the power to deliver an unbiased perspective on several issues in the residential real estate sector, specifically, that present issues of competition.

HomeOpenly is the most comprehensive resource for unbiased savings and consumer-focused real estate information on the Internet. There is no alternative when it comes to the aggregate value of savings presently offered on our platform by thousands of highly competitive real estate professionals who have opted-in into the Open Marketplace™. HomeOpenly offers consumers genuine savings in the most comprehensive way possible without any barriers to compete whatsoever.

With the power of network effects, also comes the responsibility to maintain consumers’ best interests. HomeOpenly cannot allow itself to promote anti-competitive services or a set of services that do not serve our users. HomeOpenly delivers quality and savings as valuable content. We refuse to work with iBuyers. We refuse to sell our users’ information to anyone. We refuse to participate in the broker collusion economy that presently dominates the housing sector. We do the hard work of disrupting the broken housing industry in a renegade effort to build an unprecedented level of trust with our users.

Recently, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, has issued an Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy that, among many important issues, aims "to address persistent and recurrent practices that inhibit competition, the Chair of the FTC, in the Chair’s discretion, is also encouraged to consider working with the rest of the Commission to exercise the FTC’s statutory rulemaking authority, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, in areas such as: ... (vi) unfair tying practices or exclusionary practices in the brokerage or listing of real estate; and (vii) any other unfair industry-specific practices that substantially inhibit competition."

At HomeOpenly, we applaud this order. With our consumer-focused and unbiased efforts in the housing sector, HomeOpenly is now able to weigh in on a significant piece of misinformation that is circulated by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) as well as the opposing point of view from the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) that has to do with the subject of tying listing commissions with Buyer Agent Commissions (BAC) when consumers hire real estate professionals to list their homes on the open market.

The CFA presently claims that the barrier to consumers is a coupled commission structure currently supported by the NAR, which requires all brokers to make a blanket, non-negotiable offer of buyer broker compensation to participants in the MLS. "This [NAR] rule institutionalizes a very strange and anti-competitive method of broker compensation, where sellers and their listing agents decide the commission to be paid to the buyer broker working with the home purchaser. Buyers not only cannot negotiate this commission but usually are not aware of its level because buyer brokers either do not discuss it with them or inform them that it is paid by the seller," according to CFA press release.

The NAR offers an opposing view that claims: "The value of the MLS system to consumers cannot be overstated. The MLS and associated system foster cooperation between brokers providing the best and the greatest number of options for buyers and sellers. The MLS is designed to incentivize brokers to work together to buy and sell homes on behalf of their clients as efficiently and transparently as possible." NAR further claims that commissions are fully negotiable and that "the buyer agency agreement explains that you will first seek to be compensated in the amount outlined in the listing, but that if that amount is inadequate, you will expect the client to make up the difference between _____ and the compensation provided by the listing broker. It is entirely up to you how you will fill in the blank. The buyer agency agreement is between you and your client, so you and your buyer can negotiate the terms of that agreement at any time." according to explanation on the NAR web site

In these seemingly conflicting statements, both, NAR and CFA, do not tell the full story. Both of these organizations fail to mention the elephant in the room: the home buyers can easily negotiate a refund with their buyer agent. The buyer refund is a tax-free incentive that allows the home buyer to turn a "blanket, non-negotiable offer" known as Buyer Agent Commission (BAC) into a competitively negotiated buyer agent compensation structure.

The United States residential real estate market is the largest consumer market in the world. Broker commissions decoupling is a heated debate that touches on everything in housing sector starting from consumer misinformation efforts, hundreds of billions in self-serving interests, tens of trillions in home values, tens of millions in buyer agent rebates, tens of millions in listing commissions, potential consumer benefits of MLS, potential consumer harm of inflated commissions, efficiency of home selling and home buying, decades of misinformation in the real estate industry, new and disruptive brokerage models, old and stale brokerage models, blatant antitrust violations, monopolistic home listing tendencies, open platforms for home listing services, closed off multiple listing services, millions of consumers, millions of real estate professionals, millions of annual home sales, a handful of antitrust lawsuits, a handful of online listings aggregators, unaffordable housing riddled with fees, broker commissions kickbacks, blanket referral fee agreements, price fixing, standard listing commission rates, consumer allocation, market allocation, RESPA, Sherman Act, FTC Act, local business and professions codes, venture capital infusion, buyer agent state rebate bans, broker commission splits, Big Tech, online home search, fair advertising principles, and a thousand of other relevant concepts.

To set aside all conflicts of interest. This is how HomeOpenly operates our service in a massive total addressable market presently entrenched with collusion. The subject of decoupling of commissions is one of the crucial elements of the US housing market. As a result of our unique and unbiased approach, HomeOpenly can deliver the only correct guidance to help the government address the commissions decoupling dilemma.

HomeOpenly position on this subject is progressive, rather than regressive: for consumers, it is better if commissions are coupled, if and only if, the real estate brokerage practices are competitive.

This proposition is always true, however, the "if and only if" biconditional logical requirement for this statement is incredibly difficult to deliver. As of July 2021, the US real estate industry is utterly broken and in the current widespread abuse of antitrust regulations in this sector, the professional, ethical, and legal compliance required to implement a competitive coupled commissions structure simply does not exist.

First and foremost, by itself, coupled commissions structure is not anticompetitive, but it remains a prime breeding ground for abuse of RESPA and antitrust regulations.

One of the basic premises to sustain competitive coupled commissions in an efficient real estate brokerage market with an ability to negotiate buyer refunds. ALL 50 US states and Washington DC must allow home buyers to negotiate a refund with their agent if the commissions are to remain coupled and competitive concurrently. As it stands, only 40 US states and Washington DC allow for buyers to negotiate rebates. Within the borders of ten states where home buyer rebates are presently banned, coupled commissions, by default, are anticompetitive. Currently, buyer agents are banned from offering competitive buyer rebates in: Alaska, Oregon, North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee.

Further, if the commissions are to remain competitively coupled, buyer agents cannot falsely advertise their services as free. Buyer agents cannot suggest in any way that the home seller or a listing agent pays for commissions either. The home seller sheds their net equity when offering a commission to a listing agent, but the home buyer pays ALL real estate commissions when buying a home.

The home buyer is the only one who writes a check for the purchase, and all closing costs, including commissions, end up in the home buyer’s mortgage slowly collecting interest. This is the core reason why buyer rebates are tax-free – the home buyer receives their own money back in a form of a rebate. To imply in any way that a home seller pays for commissions is an improper practice. A home seller gives up their net equity after a home sale, but the home buyer always pays for everything that has to do with the home sale itself.

Some brokers further abuse the difference between listing commissions and Buyer Agent Commissions (BAC) by comparing their listing savings to a 6% commission. At HomeOpenly, we require real estate professionals to decouple their advertised listing rates from BAC amounts when they compete for consumers. We ask agents to exclude Buyer Agent Commission amounts because these incentives must be offered by each home seller individually on each transaction. To offer a 2.5%-3% BAC is often recommended to the home seller, however, these amounts cannot be mandated according to antitrust law.

For this reason, all listing savings on HomeOpenly are compared to the 3% listing rates, and not the 6% listing rates. Legitimate competitive agents who offer savings to consumers compare their listing rates to the 2.5%-3% commission, and not the 6% listing rates. In effect, this proper method of advertising is what legally decouples the listing commission from the BAC incentives.

Some brokers abuse fair advertising principles to claim exigent savings against the 6% commissions. For example, a multi-state broker called REX Real Estate improperly compares their 2% advertised listing rate to 6% commissions. The key difference of using REX Real Estate brokerage is that it does not use MLS to advertise a listing property to other brokers. Any buyer who is represented by their own buyer agent must pay these buyer agent fees out-of-pocket when making an offer on a home listed by REX Real Estate brokerage. This proposition gives REX Real Estate an excuse to claim false savings against 6% commission, but the home seller pays the real price with a highly limited pool of self-represented buyers outside the MLS systems. Numerous consumer reviews confirm this flaw and report that their home, unlisted on MLS, had received a lot fewer offers than expected. REX Real Estate claims that it saves the seller savings by going outside MLS. In reality, REX Real Estate actionably offers only marginal listing savings when compared to a listing rate of 3% and home sellers do not pay for BAC incentive as their direct expense - the home buyers do.

In another example, Offerpad is a cash home buyer (an iBuyer) that makes below-market cash offers to consumers for their homes (off-market sale) in an effort to resell (a.k.a. buy and flip) these properties on the open market to legitimate home buyers in a short order. Accounting for exigent fees and severely reduced off-market offers, iBuyers are systematically the most expensive way to transfer homeownership in the United States. To lure consumers, Offerpad offers real estate agents an improper financial incentive (currently set at a 3% referral fee) to bring their clients to the company for a pre-market offer. A listing agent, in this case, has to choose between having to represent a consumer to sell a home in the open market and getting "quick cash" for handing them off to Offerpad.

The act of offering a pre-set incentive to a listing broker by Offerpad is a clear-cut form of collusion. Unlike BAC incentives, this incentive is agreed upon in advance between Offerpad and the listing agent, and not negotiated between the listing agent and their true client – the seller of the home. In this scheme, the seller is subjected to a pre-set referral fee between third parties in their self-interest, and without any recourse. Instead of helping the home seller list their home in the open market, the listing agent is now blatantly paid to steer her client toward Offerpad that has no obligation whatsoever to make a fair market offer on any home. The agreement for a pre-negotiated "blanket" 3% referral fee between any listing agent and Offerpad is an example of a clear-cut agreement designed to restrain free trade. Offerpad can easily up the ante to get more listing agents involved to even higher percentage of the sale. The purpose of the fee in an Offerpad scenario is to incentivize the listing agent to act against their client’s best interest. This dynamic is distinctly different from the BAC incentive where the home buyer can receive a buyer refund and their buyer agent is obligated to act in the home buyer’s best interest.

The government must focus on the distinct different nature of BAC incentive and the home buyer relationship to properly evaluate the competitive nature of coupled commissions because home buyers pay all closing costs in a home sale, including broker commissions.

The ability to negotiate a rebate is the only mechanism that turns a blanket buyer agent commissions (BAC) offering (typically offered at 2.5% to 3% via MLS) into a competitive buyer agent commission. Without this mechanism, the buyer overpays for commissions by the mere fact that they were excluded from being able to negotiate for something that they pay for.

Neither the NAR nor the CFA properly explains this difference to consumers. The NAR systematically avoids the subject of buyer rebates because the real estate industry still largely operates on the false premise that "buyer agents work for free." Some brokers receive hundreds of thousands in commissions from a single luxury home sale while claiming that their services are free. Of course, no licensed broker anywhere in the United States works for free.

The CFA undeniably looks out for consumers’ best interests. However, CFA is an old-school organization that does not fully comprehend the full net-positive power of modern real estate technology, including MLS. As soon as Zillow and Trulia made MLS data openly available to consumers, the home buyers have gained an unprecedented level of transparency. Without MLS, this would be impossible. HomeOpenly Open Marketplace™ technology now aims to amplify the housing sector into the next level of transparency by aggregating listing savings and buyer refunds for consumers for every US home where allowed by law. The technology sector is able to bring better transparency to the industry, provided that the antitrust laws are enforced as a whole. Having said this, the CFA is 100% correct to argue their position within the ten individual US states that currently prohibit home buyers from negotiating rebates with their buyer agent.

If neither the NAR nor the CFA point of view is truly correct, what is the right answer? Should listing commissions become decoupled entirely from BAC incentives? The right answer is that both systems, coupled and uncoupled commissions, can work. However, each proposition comes with its own set of benefits and constraints.

The following facts should be able to help the government to draft a new agreement settlement agreement with NAR that serves consumers’ best interests. It should be noted that regardless of the strategy chosen by the government, to either improve coupled commissions structure or to decouple commissions entirely, the HomeOpenly Open Marketplace™ e-commerce model does not change significantly.

If commissions are decoupled entirely by the regulatory agencies, for example, HomeOpenly will simply remove rebate savings available to the home buyers in 40 US states, the same way we presently do not show buyer savings in some US states, such as Oregon, where local regulations currently prohibit brokers from offering home buyer refunds.

At the same time, if the government fails to deliver a truly competitive environment in the housing sector and does not address the issues outlined below, consumer brokering schemes will eventually topple all our efforts permanently.

The government must take an immediate action to stop broker-to-broker collusion tendencies in the industry on the basis of the Sherman Act, especially, all ongoing efforts of VC-funded commission price-fixing schemes such UpNest paper brokerage; Tomo Brokerage; Opcity paper brokerage aka Realtor-dot-com; Opendoor Brokerage Partner Agents Program; Clever Real Estate paper brokerage aka listwithclever; Better-dot-com Real Estate paper brokerage; Blend Realty paper brokerage all of which operate by price fixing commissions of independent real estate professionals as a way to earn blanket referral fees. These products blatantly "dangle" price-fixed home buyer rebates before consumers while enriching themselves with kickbacks. HomeOpenly cannot compete with price fixed incentives and massive revenue derived from kickbacks and consumers should not be subjected to collusion between brokers as a way to receive price-fixed incentives from their buyer agents.

Benefits of Uncoupled Commissions

Uncoupled commissions are safer, and have several benefits as a result:

(1) Buyer agents are unable to claim that their services are free with uncoupled commissions. With uncoupled commissions, buyer agents must negotiate their fees directly with buyers. In this system, buyer agents are simply unable to receive any BAC from the proceeds of the home sale.

(2) Buyer agents cannot steer home buyers toward properties that offer higher BAC incentives, since uncoupled commissions do not offer any incentives to buyer agents, to begin with.

(3) Uncoupled commissions can be cheaper for the home buyer. The MLS cooperation comes at an added cost to the home buyer – BAC amounts. With uncoupled commissions, home buyers do not incur and added costs of BAC, and, therefore, do not need to negotiate a rebate with their agent. A home buyer can, technically, attempt to negotiate a rebate with a listing agent (since it is the home buyer that pays for ALL commissions) but most listing agents are unlikely to offer such rebate to the home buyer because they have already secured a listing agreement with the seller of the property.

(4) Blanket referral fees and kickbacks cannot be collected from buyer agents by referral fee broker collusion schemes, since uncoupled commissions have a BAC of zero. The home buyers are highly unlikely to use kickback schemes to shop for a large sum of the out-of-pocket expense.

Constraints of Uncoupled Commissions

Uncoupled commissions are safer, but they are also highly constrained.

The best way to think of uncoupled commissions is an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle that places itself into a "limp mode" because one or more of its fuel-efficient systems have gone out of order. The "limp mode" allows the vehicle to operate but on reduced power. Another way is a "safe mode" on a personal computer (PC) system that has suffered a crash and restarts itself in the most basic way possible. Uncoupled commissions are primitive and have several disincentives as a result:

(1) Uncoupled commissions remove an incentive for brokers to cooperate lawfully to improve the outcome for the home transaction between a home seller and a home buyer.

(2) Uncoupled commissions do not allow the home buyer to offset the high cost of hiring a buyer agent against the transaction, making it highly unlikely that home buyers will seek agent representation services that typically cost tens of thousands in out-of-pocket expenses.

(3) Uncoupled commissions will leave most home buyers unprepared and without guidance from a qualified buyer agent when purchasing real estate.

(4) Uncoupled commissions out-of-pocket cost structure discourages home buyers from using a buyer agent when buying a home. Therefore, home buyers are more likely to lack required financing in line when they approach a listing, are more likely to be steered by the listing agent to overpay full asking or above asking price, will be less likely to ask the home seller to make concessions and repairs and will be more likely to make overall uninformed offers.

(5) Uncoupled commissions make MLS cooperation nearly impossible. It is important to distinguish that the MLS system by itself does not serve consumers. Consumers only benefit from the MLS system structure if it provides a current feed into the MLS Aggregators that publish home listings on the Internet. Without online aggregation bridges, the MLS system is entirely closed-off to consumers. However, consumers receive a "net benefit" from the MLS system because it serves competing buyer agents equally alongside competing listing agents. MLS, in effect, is a self-serving referee for home listings. MLS rules typically discourage "pocket listings" policies, encourage fair and timely listings, require brokers to supply highly accurate information and provide similar net-positive practices to the industry. Without MLS and their strict policies, some brokers would systematically abuse consumers’ listings by sharing feeding them internally.

(6) Uncoupled commissions do not allow the home buyers to receive cash rebates from their buyer agents, since there are no BAC amounts offered.

Market Conditions Required for Competitive Coupled Commissions

Coupled commissions is an advanced system that allows consumers to transact homes more effectively, but it also requires a high rate of ethical principles by brokers as well as a solid antitrust framework. Without firm antitrust regulations, coupled commissions structure crumbles into several highly anticompetitive schemes.

Coupled commissions require several efficiency systems to operate properly:

(1) Coupled commissions allow the MLS system to exist. Coupled commissions should always be supported by an open MLS open homes data resources available on the Internet, aka MLS Aggregators. A closed-off MLS system does not allow home buyers to research homes on their own and does not give home buyers the leverage required to negotiate buyer refunds. In effect, an open MLS system is a gateway into a competitive commission structure. However, it must be noted that presently MLS Aggregators largely operate on the basis that "buyer’s agents work for free" principles, or "blanket referral fee" kickbacks. Zillow and Trulia, for example, both advocate for a standard commissions structure, they both improperly claim that sellers pay for commissions because Zillow Group is primarily sell advertising to buyer agents who do not want consumers to know about potential rebates. HomeLight and Opcity are "paper" brokerages that actively utilize MLS systems to scale kickbacks and collusion between independent brokers. These products abuse coupled commissions structure by hiding their kickbacks in the hidden BAC amounts.

(2) Coupled commissions must be supported by a 100% fair and highly comprehensive search engine that can index billions of home records from competing MLS Aggregators. The most common search index, such as Google, must index competitive Open Marketplace™ savings information alongside MLS Aggregators. Presently, Google Search is highly selective with regards to the property records it accepts from an Open Marketplace™. If consumers remain systematically misinformed about savings available to them, specifically local buyer refunds, coupled commission structure does not serve consumers. Coupled commissions must be supported by an inclusive, fair, and highly comprehensive Open Real Estate Marketplace™ that openly aggregates tens of billions of buyer refunds from local Realtors® and successfully feeds this information into live search engine results where consumers are able to find them against their property address.

(3) Coupled commissions must be supported by highly strict MLS systems that do not allow for "pocket" listings, do not exclude legitimate brokers from participation, do not allow for referral "paper" brokers to participate, and do not allow for BAC amounts to be "sorted" from high to low.

(4) Coupled commissions cannot coexist alongside referral fee consumer brokering schemes. The antitrust regulations must prosecute "paper" brokers from being able to operate broker referral fee networks subject to violations of the Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Presently several high-level MLS aggregators operate through collusion.

Below is the list of the six most damaging schemes that actively utilize MLS information to promote unlawful kickbacks, price fixing, and consumer allocation:

Realtor-dot-com (owner of Opcity brokerage) as of July 2021, rakes an estimated $500M+ in broker-to-broker kickbacks annually with direct ties into the coupled commissions MLS structure

HomeLight brokerage as of July 2021, rakes an estimated $100M to $500M in broker-to-broker kickbacks annually with direct ties into the coupled commissions MLS structure

Rocket Homes brokerage (a Rocket Mortgage subsidiary) as of July 2021, rakes an estimated $100M+ in broker-to-broker kickbacks annually with direct ties into the coupled commissions MLS structure

Redfin Partner Program as of July 2021, rakes an estimated $50 to $100M in broker-to-broker kickbacks annually with direct ties into the coupled commissions MLS structure

Opendoor Brokerage Partner Agent Program (subsidiary of Opendoor) as of July 2021, rakes an estimated $50 to $100M in broker-to-broker kickbacks annually with direct ties into the coupled commissions MLS structure

Zillow Flex as of July 2021, rakes an estimated $50 to $100M in broker-to-broker kickbacks annually with direct ties into the coupled commissions MLS structure Zillow Flex operates in select number of markets at this time, but as it continues to expand Flex program nationally. If the Flex "paper" brokerages are fully scaled, the entire residential real estate brokerage industry will become unlawfully raked with use of blanket referral agreements administered by this scheme alone.

For the home buyers to be able to purchase homes easily and efficiently, the government must continue strong enforcement efforts to create required conditions where properly coupled commissions, MLS systems, Internet MLS aggregators, competitive brokerage models, Open Marketplace™ can flourish to deliver consumers an efficient way to buy and sell homes.

At the same time, the government must make efforts to actively prevent misinformation on how brokers are paid, disassemble and prosecute broker-to-broker collusion schemes that unlawfully attempt to monopolize the industry, and require the ten remaining US states that presently ban buyer rebates to change their laws.

For the government, it is crucial to understand that the technology in the housing sector can be used to transmit and massively scale competition as well as collusion, but not both. You have to pick one or the other. While companies such as Zillow and Realtor-dot-com have begun their operations as media companies and have opened MLS information to consumers, they have now become illicit "paper" brokers that orchestrate tens of thousands of horizontal consumer allocation agreements between themselves and independent brokers (aka "partner agents") in their collusion networks. These schemes, in aggregate, now cost consumers $10 to $15 billion in inflated commissions each year.

For the competitive technology to succeed, antitrust regulations must be rigidly enforced. At the same time, the government should only place the industry in an uncoupled "safe mode" of operations if all else fails. Highly advanced data systems remain an integral force in the housing market. MLS systems can only operate as long as commissions are responsibly coupled.

Properly administered MLS systems, eventually, help consumers find the right homes easily among hundreds of local options while allowing home buyers to utilize their mortgage lump sum to offset prohibitively high out-of-pocket costs of hiring a buyer agent. As long as home buyers can negotiate rebates with their buyer agents, MLS systems do not increase the costs of buying a home, but instead, these systems actively reduce risks to home buyers from being taken advantage of by the listing agents.

Call to Action to Restore Competition in the Housing Sector

Broker collusion schemes now make it impossible to sustain BAC (buyer agent commission) structure and the MLS systems that supports it. The government has to either dismantle the MLS systems or dismantle the broker referral fee schemes that feed off it.

Among these, the federal government must act to disassemble the following schemes, listed in the order of harm to consumers and the open markets:

Realtor-dot-com (Opcity)
HomeLight
Rocket Homes
Redfin Partner Program
Opendoor Brokerage
Zillow Flex
Blend Realty (subsidiary of Blend Labs)
Better Real Estate (subsidiary of Better.com)

as well as “beta” referral fee schemes such as:

Tomo Brokerage (subsidiary of Tomo Mortgage)
Clever Real Estate (aka listwithclever)
UpNest
mellohome (loanDepot subsidiary)
Xome (Mr. Cooper subsidiary)
Sold-dot-com
OJO Labs (Movoto-dot-com)
Landed-dot-com

All of these schemes are licensed brokers that collude with their direct competitors – other brokers. They end up costing consumers $10 to $15 billion in overpriced commissions each year. Some of these schemes engage in blatant price fixing, others allocate consumers, most engage in both. To monopolize, or make an attempt to monopolize a trade by such means is a felony.

What is your role in the situation? For instance, are you a user, customer, competitor, or supplier?

I currently maintain the HomeOpenly.com platform for the full benefit of our users - present and future homeowners in the United States. HomeOpenly is an Open Real Estate Marketplace™ designed and built to improve the homeownership experience.

HomeOpenly is a technology company that designs, builds, and maintains a series of online marketplace solutions with a focus on a home search, automated valuation modeling (AVM), home buyer's and seller's representation services, mortgage origination, refinance, home insurance, renovation, design, staging, home inspections, home security, moving, home maintenance, title, escrow, cash offer stand-in programs, home warranty, and other real estate products and services.

HomeOpenly operates subject to a 0% rake as our primary competitive advantage to establish a competitive fee schedule for service providers with the use of network effects. HomeOpenly is not a broker and all service providers on our network compete for consumers individually. Our efforts are actively hampered by anti-competitive practices in the housing sector.

Successful implementation of an Open Marketplace™ platform in the real estate industry requires full enforcement of existing antitrust laws that are enacted to protect US consumers.

As long as "paper" brokers can trade consumers as "leads" between colluding competitors in exchange for blanket referral fees, Open Marketplace™ continues to operate at a competitive disadvantage.

If you have a question or comment about an antitrust issue, you may submit it to the Bureau of Competition at the United States Federal Trade Commission and/or to the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice.

If you have a question or comment about federal consumer protection financial laws, including RESPA, you may submit it to the Office of Enforcement of the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Related to: buyer agents, real estate, consumer rights, fair advertising, DOJ, NAR, CFA, BAC, home buying, MLS, real estate commissions

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Last updated: July 12, 2021
First published: July 12, 2021