Tag: Real Estate and Mortgages

The Commission issued an administrative complaint charging Realcomp with violating Section 5 of the FTC Act by prohibiting information on Exclusive Agency (EA) Listings and other forms of nontraditional listings from being transmitted from the multiple listing service (MLS) it maintains to public real estate web sites. The complaint further alleged that the conduct was collusive and exclusionary, because the brokers enacting the rules were essentially agreeing among themselves how to compete with one another, and were withholding the valuable benefits of the MLS from nontraditional real estate brokers. After the ALJ dismissed the complaint, Commission staff appealed the initial decision, and on November 2, 2009 the Commission issued an Opinion finding that Realcomp II had violated federal law by restricting the ability of member real estate agents to offer consumers lower-priced alternatives to traditional real estate services. Realcomp refused to transmit discount real estate listings to its own and other publicly available Web sites and excluded such listings from the default searches within its own database. The Commission found that these policies restricted access to these listings and harmed competition. The FTC’s Final Order requires Realcomp to provide its members non-discriminatory access to non-traditional and lower-price listings on its Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and to stop preventing such listings from being sent to its public real estate sites. Following an appeal by RealComp, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the FTC order. On August 15, 2011 Realcomp appealed to the Supreme Court. On October 11, 2011 the Supreme Court denied Realcomp's petition for a writ of certiorari.

The Commission charged that West Penn Multi-List, operator of the only MLS service for the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, unreasonablay restricted access to its MLS services, which restrained competition.  Specifically, West Penn’s MLS rules limited publication and marketing of the listing of sellers’ properties based solely on the terms of the seller’s listing contract with the real estate broker. The MLS provider limited MLS access to those brokers with a traditional full-time listing agreement with their seller, thus constraining the ability of brokers with non-traditional listing agreements to compete.  To settle the charges, West Penn agreed to a consent order which prohibits West Penn from adopting or enforcing rules that (1) require brokers to comply with the MLS form contract and submit copies of their listing contracts to the MLS, and that (2) discourage brokers and home sellers from contracting for services for terms of less than a year.

Multiple Listing Service, Inc. (MLS), a group of real estate professionals based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, settled charges that its rules unreasonably restrained competition among real estate brokers in Milwaukee.  The complaint alleges that MLS acted anticompetitively by adopting rules and policies that limit the publication and marketing of certain sellers’ properties, but not others, based solely on the terms of their respective listing contracts. The Commission alleged that the rules were collusive and exclusionary and served to withhold valuable benefits of the MLS from brokers who did not use traditional listing contracts with their customers.  Under the terms of the December 2007 consent, MLS is barred from adopting or enforcing any rule that treats one type of real estate listing agreement more advantageously than any other, and from interfering with the ability of its members to enter into any kind of lawful listing agreement with home sellers.