NAR + Listing Services artificial strong on the real estate market

[Na Wald]

Am I the only who is mad that one can not sell his own house without a middle-man? A middle man whose category has almost absolute control of the real state market, and thus the only way for you to sell your own property is by paying an insane amount of money in extortion to a middle-man?

The current situation in the Real State market can only be characterized as that of a monopoly with severe barriers to entry. Fort instance, Zillow and its affiliates control over 70% of the market; which more than fit the definition of a monopoly. Zillow was always biased toward realtors, but by allowing owners to list their properties on Zillow, Zillow also represented threat to the monopolistic position of the NAR – it was in a way potentially eroding NAR's stronghold on the market. The NAR (National Association of Realtors) then established a partnership with Zillow, and now Zillow hides all the listings of forsalebyowner -- basically fsbo have no visibility whatsoever and the vast majority of buyers who use Zillow simply will never find them. To aggravated the matters even more, in the rare case whereby a buyer finds a fsbo on Zillow, the lising points the potential buyer to a realtor – owner's contact information is completely obscured while a realtor's info is as highlighted as possible at the very top of the page, so concomitantly and in a subliminal way the page containing the fsbo listing implies to the potential buyer that he/she needs a realtor. Moreover, the only people who will contact the owner are realtors given that they are fully aware of that setup, and then will try to convince you that is impossible for you to sell your house on your own.

All other listing websites with any meaningful market share are more straightforward and simply do not allow fsbo listing altogether – at least they don’t play games by using fsbo listings as a tool to magnify realtor’s extortion scheme.

It is also well established in our court system that any entity controlling more than 50% of the market characterizes a monopoly. The current state of affair in the real state market can only be defined a monopoly; and not only a monopoly, but one with severe barriers to entry. Considering that the companies that control the real state listing market makes acting in unison in order to make it virtually impossible for a onwer to sell his/her own property. Thus that current state of affairs in the real estate market can also be characterized as a cartel, given that all preconditions of a cartel are met.

All in all, the artificial stronghold of the NRA and the listing services on the market can be characterized as a cartelized monopoly, and ultimately a mafia scheme. How is that situation allowed to continued in a such a blatant way? Are the politicians and, to some extent, the judiciary all paid and bought by the NAR?