Legal Hotline: Disturbing Trend That Could Become An Anti-Trust Problem

#WRLegalHotline​ Lawyer Annie Fitzsimmons talks about the disturbing trend that could become a very big Anti-Trust problem.
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Legal Hotline Video featuring Annie Fitzsimmons, Washington REALTORS® Legal Hotline Lawyer - The Legal Hotline is a Washington REALTOR® Member only benefit. These videos are intended for Washington REALTOR® members. If you have questions and are a primary member in good standing with Washington REALTORS®, visit www.warealtor.org to contact the Legal Hotline Lawyer. You will need your NRDS ID and password to inquire with the Legal Hotline or search the database.
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before using this video outside of TH-cam.

[@johnhays2297]

Let's continuously lift the level of professionalism in this profession and industry, set the bar high for ourselves.

[@timothyglassett4565]

Love the videos Annie!!! Thanks for your time!

[@JulieCollison]

Good talk, Annie. I love your passion about this. Let's hope that this gets seen by those who need it!

[@coreyeubanks5381]

You should play this video before each and everyone one of your classes, and when coming back from a break. That'll get people settled down and focused. This is an important message, and one of the reasons I mostly stay away from social media.

[@lakewenatcheeproperties]

Thanks for getting the word out. Hopefully anyone practicing this behavior stops yesterday.

[@nanwimmers3852]

Thank you Annie!!! i absolutely love this video ... its a great reminder to us all to watch our causal conversations between brokers!

[@kellytrimble4120]

As a member of the public, I think this video makes the entire Realtor organization look sort of crooked.
I've just watched four or five TH-cams on this anti-trust subject done by various Realtor groups across the country and they all take the same approach. I copied and pasted this comment on two or three of them. They don't seem to be concerned about whether anti-trust or anti-competitive business practices are acceptable or not, but they do seem to go to a lot of trouble to produce almost exactly the same laundry list of things to NOT do when you are engaging in your anti-competitive collusions. It gives me the impression that the policy of NAR and basically all the local boards and individual realtors is that they are fine with anti-competitive business practices, maybe that's what they are all about, but these are the things you need to NOT do to keep from getting caught.
Anti-competitive business happens, I guess Realtor training like this video probably makes it easier for it to be a little further under the surface, but it still happens. I feel like it happened to me. As an appraiser who had a broker's license, I always felt like I was being frozen out of the local board somehow, all of my dealings with the local Realtor organization were all just wierd and and I never really knew why. I didn't start out trying to do brokerage work (a bit of a story as to why), there were varous times when I toyed with the idea of doing brokerage work, but I always got resistance from local Realtors. As we were coming out of the latest recession, we had a couple of the local commercial brokers pass away, and I figured the town was about to see some significant activity, so I assumed there would be plenty of room for another commercial broker, but apparently not. I went around to all the commercial brokers in the area and the first one I talked to was like "Great!-SELL MY LISTINGS !! Be sure to let me know what you have for sale so I can help you sell too." -- what I always thought was the classic welcome to the business, especially after having a broker's licence for thirty years and not doing anything with it out of deference to everybody. But over the subsequent couple of weeks, every other commercial broker in the market I talked to was more like "I am sad to hear that, I will not be bringing you offers, I will not cooperate on commissions, if you have a buyer for one of my listings you need to direct them to me. Furthermore (and this was the part that really impeded me) If you do brokerage work as a competitor to me, I will not be confirming comparable sales data to you anymore as an appraiser."--almost as if they were reading a script. Hard for me to believe they all came up with the same thing on their own, and then shortly after that the first lady I talked to got cold on the idea as well.
I can't help but think that was coordinated somehow, and it seemed to be coordinated thru the local Realtor board. It kept me out of brokerage, so it worked. Being ~THAT~ broker that nobody else will do business with is not the way to start doing commercial brokerage in a community, I saw another guy have to go thru that in this market a couple of decades ago, and I would have to give up my commercial appraisal career of thirty years to try it. So it didn't happen. You would think that there would be something in some sort of Realtor code of ethics about this sort of business practice, but apparently not.

And I can't sue anybody for it, I can't prove anything, and I can't really even complain anywhere about it. First, anything I complain about would just sound like sour grapes. Second, any hint of dissatisfaction and they could all stop confirming sales data for appraisals (I'm in a non-reporting state), and even though I am trying to get out of having to do appraisal work locally and work out of this market so I don't have to deal with these people who all seem to think I'm a complete moron in the real estate industry, appraisers I trade data with in other communities expect me to be their connection to my local market data. I'm a complete joke in the real estate business, but I still have to be nice to these people, and it's not fun. I guess the only people this part of anti-trust helps are the big discount brokerages that have the ability to litigate. I just have to suck it up.
Sure, I've held this in for a while, and every once in a while I get sidetracked thinking about it, and perhaps this lets me vent. But really, the idea that NAR or any other local board gives a rip about anit-trust is sort of insulting. It's obvious to me that NAR doesn't really mean any of this. I'm guessing that this and the other videos were made as part of some sort of settlement with somebody to show they were trying to 'educate' their members about the subject, but the videos sort of sound like instructions on how to do anti-competitive business practices and avoid liability by avoiding doing the specific things described in the video.

[@toriathome]

Thank you for being honest. We all need a “Gut Check” on a regular basis!!

[@BarnettAssociatesTeam]

Annie seems pissed. :)