When National Association of Realtors President Kevin Sears invited questions from a room full of brokers at NAR’s midyear conference Monday morning, broker-owner Byron Menke asked a question he’s hearing a lot from other brokers: “[The Department of Justice] seems to be on us like a dog with a bone, and it doesn’t seem to be going away,” Menke said.
“If we have such a good advocacy relationship with our legislators and we do such a good job, why does that not transfer over? And why are we not putting some pressure there?”
Menke is chair of NAR’s Broker Engagement Council, which met Monday at the Realtors Legislative Meetings in Washington, D.C., and invited Sears to their meeting.
“Yeah, it doesn’t translate too much,” Sears said.
According to Sears, NAR had “a rocky relationship” with the DOJ last year, in part because the trade group had been suing the agency for the previous four years over a settlement agreement the DOJ withdrew from. That case ended with an appeals court ruling in the DOJ’s favor and the U.S. Supreme Court declining to take the case.
Sears told attendees he had met with the DOJ twice in Washington, D.C., and “there was a clear lack of understanding of how we do business by some of the people that were there in the room.”
“They think we take advantage of the consumer. We protect the consumer. Without the consumer, we don’t exist. Why are we going to take advantage of them? So we explained to them about that,” Sears said.
In one of those meetings, Sears said he and a handful of members of NAR’s Leadership Team sat down with 36 DOJ attorneys: 24 in person and another dozen on Zoom.
One of those present was Jonathan Kanter, former assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s antitrust division, who informed Sears that the DOJ had investigated NAR 35 times in the last 70 years.
Menke asked what the DOJ’s “issue” was with NAR — was it the association’s Clear Cooperation Policy? The DOJ is currently investigating the CCP, which requires listing brokers to submit listings to Realtor-affiliated multiple listing services within one business day of publicly marketing them.
“They think we make too much money,” Sears said, prompting murmuring among attendees.
“We make too much money. That’s it. I said I represent 1.5 million entrepreneurs who choose to wake up unemployed every day. But it’s through their hard work, by representing their clients and consumers, that they can earn a living.”
But, Sears said, “that was last year. I’m cautiously optimistic this year. So if anybody is reporting on this-” He paused, prompting laughter from the audience.
Sears said NAR has reached out and had conversations with some of the staff attorneys at the DOJ and hoped to set up a meeting with Gail Slater, Kanter’s successor.
“Ultimately, what I’m looking for is world peace: Is there something we can do where we can be on the same page? Where we can go to our members and go to our brokers and say, ‘Okay, follow these rules and we should be good’?”
A council member suggested that “the biggest problem in our industry” is how Realtors behave on social media, saying “whatever comes to mind, and it makes our industry look really, really poor.” She said she believed that was why the DOJ was keeping its eyes on real estate.
“That’s a very astute statement,” Sears agreed. “We are our worst enemies.”
He noted that not only is the DOJ paying attention to social media, but also to the podcasts and videos coming from the industry.
“They watch them,” Sears said. “They do. They want to see what we’re saying.”
Sears ended by encouraging brokers to embrace the settlement’s practice changes and take advantage of opportunities to explain to consumers the value, expertise and knowledge that Realtors bring to real estate transactions.
“A year from now, I want to make sure that our Realtor members are still smack dab in the middle of the transaction,” Sears said.
