Covid seeding new era of consumer protection in real estate?

At the Real Estate Cafe, we’re always cooking up something creative — often revisiting anniversaries and ideas that were “half baked” and still need collaborators and guest chefs to cocreate a masterpiece. One of our best events was 24 years ago (July 29, 1996) when Ralph Nader participated in a roundtable discussion on “Recreating the Real Estate Industry” online. To celebrate a season of anniversaries, we’re going to revisit innovations and long-overdue reforms using MyVote.io, an interactive platform we first used to propose a series of RE2020 Unconferences

Over the remaining 20 weeks in 2020, we invite collaborators to engage 20 different content areas and ask YOU to vote on potential session topics. The goal this time is NOT to host an event in a single weekend but to use the Covid crisis to revisit our original question: 

“What will the real estate ecosystem look like in the future?” not in the year 2020, as was our goal in 2015, but 20 years from now to serve the kind of society we want to cocreate post pandemic? 

READY TO VOTE? 

Which of these topics would you like fellow real estate consumer advocates and other stakeholders to revisit in coming weeks, and how would you like to be involved? See range of options from listening to a podcast to joining a working group for each “entree “on our Menu of Innovations & Reforms!

To mark the anniversary with Ralph Nader and mirror the Congressional hearing on Big Tech today, we’ll start our call to reform real estate with 10 topics related to Consumer Protection.

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This link will take you to the interactive voting platform where you can cast your vote.  Feel free to share this link via social media:

https://bit.ly/RE2020_ProtectREConsumers

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Real Estate Agent

Apparently, a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition entitled, Real Estate Commissions Under Pressure, says a major story will appear this Sunday in the New York Times Magazine calling traditional real estate agents an "endangered species." 

The use of the phrase "endangered species" tickles me, because The Real Estate Cafe is planning a series of meetings / online chats with real estate change agents and consumers in New England to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Ralph Nader’s appearance at one of our real estate roundtables in 1996.  The title for the series is "Intelligent REdesign," a deliberate pun on the evolution versus intelligent design debate raging across the country.  What better place to host such an event than "Darwin’s," a wifi cafe outside Harvard Square?  (Darwin, survival of the fittest, endangered species, Intelligence REdesign, get it?)

The goal of the yearlong series is to:

1.  Help real estate consumers, both buyers and sellers, become more aware of new moneysaving real estate business models, and choose the one that best matches their needs. 

2.  Involve consumers directly in the process of "redesigning" the real estate industry to better meet their needs.  We’ve …

Copy Nader email

Greetings, Vote Nader.org,

Fifteen years ago today, Ralph Nader delivered a keynote address at a two-day conference in Boston called, "The Consumer Revolution in Real Estate."

Last year, I spoke with Ralph at a book signing at the Harvard Coop about releasing the content of his 1993 speech online.  He seemed interested at the time and invited me to follow-up.  To celebrate the 15th anniversary, I’d like to get written authorization to release both the text on the wiki below (which is password protected) and the video online?

http://realestatecafe.pbwiki.com/NaderSpeech1993
Please request access through wiki

With recent headlines about congressional efforts to rescue homeowners from foreclosure (see BusinessWeek article: The Plans to Save Underwater Loans" http://tinyurl.com/2v9kgh) and Ralph’s recent appearance on NBC to talk about fraud in the housing industry, I wanted to be careful not to release the text of the 15 year old speech or video clips without your knowledge and permission.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23830011#23830011

Please let me know if there are restrictions or concerns about how and where the content can be used.  At a minimum, I would like permission to:

1.  Publish a link on the wiki to the full text;

2.  Publish selected paragraphs or quotes on blog, and / or wiki;

3.  Publish selected short video clips to blog, and / or wiki.

4.  Show the full video at a real estate round table with home buyers, sellers, and real estate  professionals.

If your team would also like to reuse the content for your own purposes, I would be glad to grant permissions and potentially explore collaborations.  As presidential candidates, congress, and others debate foreclosure intervention strategies, and propose reforms to prevent another trillion dollar collapse of the housing market in the future, perhaps Mr. Nader can call for a vigorous investigation of conflicts of interest in the residential brokerage industry and their costs to individuals and society. 

Here’s one example posted in my comment to  BusinessWeek’s blog post, "Bad Brokers:

    "My so-called buyer’s agent (who promptly switched roles at contract signing without explanation), initially advised me to bid $750,000 for my house of choice, which was listed at $699,900. When I told her that such an offer was beyond my price range, she was quite adamant that I not offer anything under the list price. When I finally backed out the deal because of her bait and switch scam, I later heard that the house in question sold shortly afterwards for $682,000–in other words, nearly $70,000 less than the bid suggested by my so-called buyer agent."

    "This type of price inflation (caused by seller’s agents masquerading as buyer’s representatives) must have a very distorting impact on housing costs. The economic fallout is enormous: ordinary citizens are forced to move out farther in search of decent, affordable places to live, which leads to a host of problems connected with traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, etc."

    "As I perceive it, the real estate cartel’s use of dual agency [a.k.a. "designated agency"], which works to the detriment of the average consumer while enriching dishonest agents through the practice of double-dipping, contributes significantly to the manifold problems we see in the residential housing market and therefore should be fully exposed."

BusinessWeek blog post:
http://tinyurl.com/2ryrdd

Bill


"The next major revolution in real estate will be fee based services replacing the blanket commission pricing that has dominated the industry for so long."
Former Chief Economist, National Association of Realtors

Bill Wendel
The Real Estate Cafe
Serving a menu of money-saving services since 1995
97a Garden St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-661-4046 office / cell
realestatecafe@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/realestatecafe
https://realestatecafe.com
http://www.realestatecafe.blogs.com
http://www.realestatecafe.pbwiki.com

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Real Estate…a National Pandemic?

Barron’s
       
cover
        article “The Big Glut-Trouble in Paradise” didn’t help
        rattled nerves when it outlined that prices and sales have already
        slumped by up to 40% in some areas,
and that second home sales now
        made up 40% of the U.S. market. The article also told how while 10,000
        condominium units were built over the past ten years in Miami-Dade
        County, 50,000 units are currently under construction or soon to
        commence with another 50,000 currently in the planning stages.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2006/0708.html

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