Realtors Consider New Online Rule

The nation’s largest organization of real estate agents and brokers backed off Thursday from imposing a rule governing online property listings that has been under scrutiny by federal antitrust regulators.

The National Assn. of Realtors agreed to consider crafting a new online listings policy that would pass regulatory muster. The decision came after talks in Washington with lawyers for the Justice Department.

“We are having ongoing discussions on how to move forward” with a single uniform policy for dealing with the electronic display of real estate data, said Steve Cook, the trade group’s spokesman. Justice Department officials declined to comment.

In the meantime, federal regulators continued to combat moves by real estate agents around the nation designed to protect their franchise.

Late Thursday, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter that urged the Alabama state Senate to reject an industry-sponsored bill that would make it illegal for brokers to offer consumers no-frills “fee-for-service” deals, such as charging a flat rate for listing a sellers’ home.

“The passage of the bill would reduce consumer choice and likely cause Alabama consumers to pay more for real estate services,” the agencies said.

Regulators have been pressing the Realtors group to amend a rule set to take effect in July that would allow brokers to withhold their listings from online broker sites. These listings are part of a multiple listing service, a compilation of homes for sale by brokers who are members of local Boards of Realtors, and for decades were available only to licensed real estate agents.

The Internet has changed that and the question of who controls the data has taken on more currency as Web-based brokerages are testing novel ways of selling real estate services, often at discounted rates.

The Realtors group contends that brokers should be able to market their listings as they see fit. “I can’t think of another business in America where you share your marketing information with your competitor,” Cook said. “It’s like asking your competitor to find you a customer.”

The trade group’s proposed rule sparked enough complaints about its potential to impede the business of Internet-based brokerages that antitrust regulators opened an investigation after it was proposed 15 months ago.

Today, President Bush is scheduled to address the Realtors group’s mid-year conference in Washington. The organization is among the biggest lobbying groups, representing more than 1 million brokers and agents.

The regulators’ letter to Alabama was the third sent by the agencies in recent weeks protesting so-called minimum-service rules that a number of states are considering. The letters come on the heels of a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against the Kentucky Real Estate Commission after it enacted a ban against consumer rebates on real estate commission fees.

Meanwhile, Americans continue to buy and sell homes at a near-record rate. The Realtors group reported Thursday that first-quarter existing-home sales were at the third-highest pace on record, up 8.3% from a year earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.84 million units.