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The experience of lying in bed late at night and scrolling through a nearly infinite feed of homes is a modern miracle — not merely because of all the tech packed into your iPhone, but for the simple reason that all those houses are gathered in one place. Open up Zillow, Redfin, or any of their competitors, and you'll have a clear picture of almost all the homes up for grabs around the country.That may be about to change. Real estate's power players are engaged in a bitter standoff over who exactly gets to see the millions of homes listed for sale in the US each year. At the center of the debate are the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-agents-lawsuits-buy-sell-homes-forever-housing-market-2023-6">multiple-listing services</a>, or MLSes, local databases that gather pictures and details of homes for sale. Almost as soon as a real-estate agent starts touting a home publicly — via an email blast, a post on their website, or a sign in a front yard — they'll throw the listing on the MLS to be fed to other agents and aggregator sites like Zillow. Smart business move? Sure. But agents also don't have a choice, thanks to a rule handed down five years ago by the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lawsuits-verdict-realtors-brokerages-real-estate-agents-home-buying-selling-2023-11">powerful National Association of Realtors</a> called the "clear-cooperation policy," which requires them to list a home on the MLS within one business day of marketing it to the public.Some of the industry's high-profile figures are pushing for the NAR to loosen the rule or get rid of it, which they say would give sellers and their agents more freedom to choose where — and to whom — they advertise their properties. The NAR's top brass are set to consider the change in the coming months.The cynical take is that those in favor of a shake-up — including the leaders of some of the country's largest real-estate brokerages, like Compass and Anywhere Real Estate, the owner of big-name brands like Coldwell Banker and Century 21 — just want to hoard listings on their own websites. As gatekeepers, the thinking goes, they'll be able to lure agents and clients with exclusive access to these properties, growing their businesses and padding their bottom lines. The result would be a more fractured market; instead of going to just Zillow or Realtor.com, a buyer might have to comb through individual brokerages' websites. Agents might be emboldened to share listings among private networks of in-the-know brokers rather than market them to everyone. More homes could trade hands out of view of the average homebuyer."If you were to ask people, 'Should houses be hidden?' most people would say no," Brian Boero, the CEO of 1000Watt, a brand and marketing agency for real-estate companies, told me. "If you asked people, 'Should everybody be able to see the houses that are for sale on the market at any time and have, at least, access to them?' I think most people would say absolutely."It's not quite so cut-and-dried. Opponents of the rule say sellers should be able to market their homes however they see fit, arguing that there are all kinds of reasons someone might not want to list their home on the MLS. And if the goal is a transparent market that prioritizes consumers, the clear-cooperation policy is a flawed tool. It contains a glaring loophole that critics say may have actually pushed more home sales into the shadows.This latest conflict pits Goliath against Goliath, but the stakes are highest for the millions of Davids just trying to put roofs over their heads. The typical buyer wants to see all the homes available, while the typical seller wants a quick sale and a good price. Which kind of housing market will get them there? Both sides claim to know the answer, but their visions for the future of homebuying are miles apart.In the not-so-distant past, MLSes distributed home listings via books — thick, unwieldy tomes that were outdated by the time they made it into a real-estate agent's hands. The introduction of the online MLS around the turn of the century was a revelation, providing a central repository of reliable info on an area's available homes. The system isn't perfect: Access to the MLS is often restricted to licensed agents who pay hundreds of dollars in dues each year to belong to their local, state, and national Realtor associations, on top of MLS fees. Since there are more than 500 local MLSes in the US, an agent might have to pay dues to several of these groups just to see all the homes within an hour's drive of their office. But the databases are still widely considered a model for the rest of the world.While an agent doesn't technically have to participate, the MLS's trove of data is practically a necessity to do the job. And in order to play in the MLS sandbox, you have to follow the MLS rules. About 97% of local MLSes are effectively controlled by the NAR, a trade group with roughly 1.5 million members who pay for the "Realtor" designation and agree to abide by the organization's ethical and professional guidelines. The NAR doesn't own the MLSes directly, but it sets the rules for most of them. Five years ago, the organization's leaders pinpointed a growing problem: Some agents weren't playing fair. They were keeping select listings off the MLS and marketing them on their own websites or among clubby groups of brokers known as private listing networks. The prevalence of so-called pocket listings has always been hard to quantify, but pretty much everyone agrees they were on the rise in the years leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. Redfin estimated that in the second quarter of 2019, about 1.7% of listings, or some 18,000 homes, were likely pocketed. Those homes were marked "sold" or "pending sale" the same day they were put in the MLS — a sign that the transaction may have already been wrapped up in private. Agents promoting pocket listings might argue that they were acting in the best interests of their clients; a seller going through a messy divorce, for example, may prefer a quiet sales process rather than the fanfare of a public listing. The MLS also displays information that may not be favorable to a seller. It shows the number of days a home has been on the market and keeps track of price cuts, offering buyers leverage points that would never be found on a listing broker's website. There are, of course, self-serving reasons an agent might prefer to advertise a home off the MLS. If they find an unrepresented buyer, they may be able to pocket the portion of the commission that would have otherwise gone to the buyer's agent, upping their haul from the sale to, say, 6% instead of the typical 3%. Belonging to private listing networks could also help drum up business: Work with me, an agent could tell a buyer, and you'll get access to all these listings that Joe Schmo at XYZ Brokerage doesn't even know about. Indeed, Top Agent Network, a destination for high-achieving brokers to share "not-yet-on-MLS properties" with each other, claims on its website that agents can help buyers find their dream homes "by staying ahead of the market."The whole point of the MLS, though, is to have all listings in one place for everyone to find — the system falls apart if agents get to pick and choose which ones to contribute. The NAR's answer to this chaos was the clear-cooperation policy. The rule, which went into effect in May 2020, tightened the screws on agents by requiring them to put a listing on the MLS within one business day of marketing it to the public. For-sale sign in the front yard? Better get it on the MLS pronto. Gush about it on your Facebook page? Clock's ticking. Teasing homes in a private listing network without also posting on the MLS was a no-go.The idea was that any alternative to the MLS would harm both consumers and their agents. A seller risks getting a lower price if there are fewer eyeballs on their listing. A buyer might know of only a fraction of homes for sale at any time, limiting their options. Agents can't make money off shadow listings that they don't even know about. MLSes are also <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/bad-real-estate-agents-realtors-homebuyers-sellers-housing-market-2023-7">huge sources of revenue</a> for the many local Realtor associations that own and operate them — the NAR has a direct interest in making sure they remain valuable."Everybody benefits when we all pool our listings, and we do so in a timely manner," Saul Klein, a longtime real-estate executive who's the CEO of the San Diego Multiple Listing Service, told me. "And people are hurt, potentially, when we don't do that."The new rule, however, included a loophole. It allows agents to market a home to other agents within their brokerage without sharing it on the MLS, a practice known as "office exclusives." The carveout effectively allows for private gardens within each brokerage, filled with homes you can't find anywhere else. Large brokerages like Compass, which has more than 30,000 agents across the country, can make a pitch to a seller like this: "We'll maintain your privacy by keeping your home off Zillow and test your chosen price across our huge network. We can limit the showings so you don't have random people traipsing through your home. And if you're not satisfied, we can always turn to the MLS later."Today, many large brokerages tout offerings that attempt to capitalize on this state of play. Compass, for instance, will offer to list your home as a "private exclusive" within its brokerage before launching it to the public. Howard Hanna's "Find It First" program allows sellers to "benefit from broad exposure without compromising on control," the company's CEO, Howard Hanna IV, said in a statement. In a lawsuit after the unveiling of the rule, Top Agent Network accused the NAR of privileging large brokerages (which belong to the association) while stamping out the competition from alternatives to the MLS. It complained that the organization's rule was "a transparent attempt at protecting its turf, not helping consumers."The clear-cooperation rule faded into the background as the pandemic upended the industry. But as the market settled and other big changes, like the class-action lawsuits over agent commissions, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/homebuyers-real-estate-revolution-nar-lawsuits-new-rules-realtors-agents-2024-4">reached a resolution</a>, a group led by Compass' CEO, Robert Reffkin, began publicly pressuring the NAR to reconsider clear cooperation. <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-housewives-mauricio-umansky-agency-daily-schedule-2022-8">Mauricio Umansky</a>, a celebrity agent and brokerage CEO known for appearing on "Buying Beverly Hills," "Real Housewives," and "Dancing with the Stars," was already part of the opposition to the rule, having sued the NAR over his attempts to start an MLS alternative known as the PLS, or the Property Listing Service. Executives at Anywhere Real Estate, one of the largest brokerage companies in the country, have pushed for the rule to be loosened but not eliminated — one suggestion is to give agents more time to market a home publicly before listing it on the MLS. On the other side, executives at Zillow and Redfin decried the potentially disastrous consequences of a fractured housing market. In a recent op-ed article, Redfin's president and CEO, Glenn Kelman, argued that the end of clear cooperation would allow large brokerages to control more inventory, forcing buyers, sellers, and their agents to flock to big players rather than smaller outfits."The goal in weakening Clear Cooperation is to make being bigger matter — more than being better," Kelman wrote. "That is the law of the jungle, masquerading as freedom."It's not clear, though, that the clear-cooperation rule made things much better for consumers. In a hot market, it's easier for brokers to market a home off the databases and still get it sold. Redfin estimates that in the second quarter of 2021, the share of listings that were likely pocketed increased to 2.8%, or almost 35,000 homes. <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-ice-age-higher-home-prices-fewer-sales-inventory-2023-5">The market has since slowed</a>, and Redfin's estimation of pocket listings was down to 1.8% of sales in the second quarter of this year, roughly in line with the same period in 2019. These are imperfect estimates; it's possible for a home to debut on the MLS in the morning and have a sale pending by the end of the day without anything unscrupulous happening. They could also be undercounts, since some homes may never be listed in the MLS at all. Ultimately, the data from one of clear cooperation's biggest advocates doesn't prove that the rule has actually reduced off-MLS sales. What has changed since the rule went into effect is brokerages' eagerness to control access to home listings. Home sales volume has plummeted since the heady days of 2021, which means <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/compass-layoffs-robert-reffkin-housing-market-2023-1">less revenue for the businesses that make their money by taking a cut of their agents' sales commissions</a>. Without clear cooperation, brokerages could drive more traffic to their own websites by publicly advertising homes that aren't available in the MLS or on sites like Zillow. And they could continue to tease office exclusives that are accessible only if you work with their agents.Both sides of this debate can reasonably claim that the industry will face legal trouble if they don't get their way. The Department of Justice, which has been fighting to reopen a wide-ranging investigation into the NAR, has signaled that the organization's control of the MLSes could be anticompetitive, stifling the development of alternative databases. What incentive is there for someone to start an MLS rival, the thinking goes, if basically everyone who uses the new database would still have to put their listings on the MLS anyway? On the other hand, proponents of clear cooperation argue that not showing homes to everybody could run afoul of fair-housing laws designed to ensure that buyers have equal access to the market."The fact that every listing is contributed to the MLS and that every consumer has access to that information is an enormous and overwhelming benefit to support fair housing," Victor Lund, a founder and managing partner of Wav Group, a consulting firm for real-estate companies, told me. "There is too much opportunity for housing discrimination without it."There are a lot of ways this could go. The final call will rest in the hands of top leaders at NAR, whose board will likely mull over the issue at its annual convention in the second week of November. It could be months before a decision, however, especially since it's not clear what kinds of actions the DOJ may take against the organization. NAR leadership could keep clear cooperation as is, repeal it entirely, or revise it in ways that might not even be obvious right now. Several people I spoke with, including Kelman, told me they'd like to see the office-exclusive loophole closed — no more exceptions for agents marketing homes within their brokerages."If you haven't bought a home yet," Kelman told me, "there is nothing more unsettling than seeing a moving van outside a house that never showed up in any of your searches." An imperfect rule, he argued, is better than no rule. Those in Kelman's camp say a housing market without the current version of the MLS would be more divided and more difficult to parse. At the same time, it's impossible to brush aside the criticisms of the rule. There's no guarantee it will remain as it is when the dust settles.The lawsuits over agent commissions last year were seismic, but they were ultimately about the practical matter of consumers' wallets: how much they were paying agents and what they were getting in return. The debate over clear cooperation strikes me as much more existential. Its result will determine the kind of housing market we have in the future. Buckle up.<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/james-rodriguez">James Rodriguez</a> is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

Realtors are fighting over hidden listings. Their battle could make it harder to find a home.

Last summer, when I told my then-girlfriend that I had just hired a real-estate agent to help me buy an apartment, her response annoyed me: "Sounds like a scam."I didn't understand her suspicions. She had never purchased a home, and as a lawyer, I just assumed I knew how the system worked: The buyer has an agent, but the seller pays a commission (typically 6% of the sale price) that's split between their agent and the buyer's agent. So it's like I get free help to guide me through the morass of homebuying.I quickly learned how foolish I was, and how right she was. Three months later, when I bought my Brooklyn apartment, I ended up being my own agent. In the coming years, with real-estate agents facing pressure from sites like Zillow and from the National Association of Realtors' agreeing to an industry-shifting <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/national-association-realtors-lawsuit-settlement-housing-market-homebuying-agents-commissions-2024-3">$418 million price-fixing settlement</a> in March, it's likely that a lot more people will do what I did and represent themselves. That's because commission splitting may soon be a thing of the past.If you're thinking about buying a home, ask yourself the following three questions: Do you have an internet connection? Do you have at least a seventh-grade reading level? Do you like saving money? If you answer yes to all three, you're in fantastic shape to be your own agent.I wish someone had told me this before my house-hunting journey began.The thought of buying a home has always terrified me, but as New York City <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apartment-rent-increases-landlords-antitrust-lawsuits-real-estate-software-realpage-2024-4">rents</a> were ticking up by the millisecond in a historic housing crisis, I felt like it was now or never.For months I searched on my own, first zeroing in on my ideal neighborhood and then fumbling through the harrowing math exercise of deciding just what my price limit was. I even made custom maps on StreetEasy, plotting down to the block where I envisioned my future life.But having grown up hearing the NYC apartment market likened to the Hunger Games, I had no idea how to actually go from <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-mistake-buyers-sellers-mortgage-rates-time-to-buy-2024-3">looking to buying</a>, and — I thought at the time — I desperately needed help. So when a close friend vouched for an agent who had represented her in several deals, I was ecstatic.Then I met my agent, and things began to feel off.The best part of having an agent was realizing just how much I had already figured out on my own. He said he'd want to know what my "requirements" and "nice to haves" were, so I made a chart, listing dozens of items. At least 900 square feet: requirement. In-building gym: nice to have. In-unit laundry: really nice to have. Looking at the list and the map, the agent told me what I'd known months before meeting him: "You might need to be more flexible." Strike one for Captain Obvious. But also: Wasn't an agent there for my pickiness? I knew that what I wanted was at the very outer limit of my budget, especially at a time with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-agent-commissions-steering-hiding-homes-housing-market-lawsuits-2024-3">record-low inventory</a>. But my list of "must haves" truly were the things I needed for buying an apartment to make sense. The list was already a small fraction of what I would have written when I started looking (farewell, pipe dreams of river views and sprawling private decks). And where I looked had already expanded far beyond the spots I ideally wanted. I wasn't asking for the impossible, just something very particular and very hard to find. Wasn't that the whole point of having an agent, someone paid to pluck for you your <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/baby-boomers-millennials-large-homes-inventory-affordability-election-2024-4">personal paradise</a> from the endless haystack of units you don't want or can't afford?Rather than find this magical listing, however, my agent went into sales mode, trying to explain to me why I should settle for places I had already ruled out. He was always very responsive and polite (until he wasn't, more on that later), sending me leads as soon as he saw something promising come on the market. But with a few exceptions, the "leads" my agent "found" were always things I'd already seen on StreetEasy, sometimes weeks earlier. Strike two.In fairness, all agents have a disadvantage here, because the internet has come to democratize homebuying. For many years, even though sites like Realtor.com existed, buyers were at the mercy of agents to know what was for sale. This was because, a 2005 antitrust lawsuit from the US Department of Justice lays out, Realtors used their control of the listing services to strangle the nascent online housing market and punish agents who listed homes publicly. All that ended in 2008, when a massive settlement opened up the floodgates of public listings. These days, most agents largely have the same listings the rest of us do.So my agent wasn't going to find me my <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-cant-millennials-buy-homes-first-time-buyers-mortgage-rates-2023-12">dream house</a>, and the work of hunting was basically on me. But I still needed his expertise to vet the apartment and negotiate a deal that would surely come with reams of byzantine paperwork. Didn't I?According to Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, many of us don't. Homebuying, he says, is "not rocket science." But the real-estate industry has made it hard for many buyers to understand just how little having an agent can help. "I call it the 'Alice in Wonderland' world, because things are not as they seem. And when you understand them, they don't make much sense."For me, I finally climbed out of the rabbit hole and woke up when my agent led me into a bidding war.The apartment was bright, airy, just a few blocks from McCarren Park, and more than 1,200 square feet — practically a mansion by Williamsburg standards. But there were worrying signs. The unit's bottom floor was below street level, and the block itself was in a flood zone. After touring the unit with the agent, I had a bunch of questions. The inquiries I parroted, most of which I'd learned from Googling, were pretty straightforward: Any pending or anticipated building repairs, assessments, or compliance measures? For example, in New York City, larger buildings need to periodically erect costly scaffolding to inspect their facade — you want to know if that's around the corner. But to almost every due-diligence question I asked, my agent said, "That's something for the lawyers in diligence."It turned out that almost all the things that really concerned me — from the condo association's financial health to the building's historical flood data — were to be investigated after the sale had been negotiated, after my agent had done his part. Despite my concerns, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-bubble-home-prices-stay-high-crash-real-estate-2024-2">my agent</a> prodded me to go for a bid. He kept telling me that the apartment might sell very quickly, that we had to move soon. So we put in a bid. And when I saw it, I was shocked — not at the amount, but at the document. The whole thing was maybe a third of a page, summarizing the apartment's location, the amount of the offer, and a few other easy-to-understand details (like cash offer or mortgage). I was expecting something massive, confusing, and formal, but, again, it turned out that was for later, something for a lawyer to review, not the agent. I've read tweets from reply guys longer than the bidding document.The bid almost worked. It was down to me and one other buyer, someone very similarly situated and with a similar bid, according to my agent.This is when he finally struck out. When I made my bid, I went to the absolute maximum of what I felt comfortable spending, leaving zero wiggle room. But now my agent said that wasn't enough. He knew my finances and kept telling me how he knew I could afford to go higher. "What's 50k really going to mean to you over the lifetime of the apartment?" But I knew that was $50,000 more than I was willing to spend, $50,000 more than I thought it was worth. Buying a house can make even the largest sums seem negligible if you're not careful. But $50,000 is still $50,000. When I held firm, my agent couldn't hide his exasperation. He said something about me needing to "get serious." I realized he wanted the deal to go through more than I did. After all, that was the only way he got paid.I lost the bidding war, and a couple months later I was cosmically relieved I had. During record-breaking rains in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/city-state-budget-shortfall-deficit-california-denver-boston-new-york-2024-4">New York City</a> last fall, the corner with that apartment flooded several feet above street level. I imagined just how awful it would have felt to have overextended myself to buy that apartment only to end up financially and literally underwater.Brobeck described the real-estate industry as "rife with conflicts of interest," including many scenarios far worse than what I faced. Where my agent was merely pushy, others have gone on to "double-dip" on payments from both buyers and sellers, to drive up the price their client pays to increase the commission, and even share confidential information from one client with another. The National Association of Realtors' own 2015 report says, "The real estate industry is saddled with a large number of part-time, untrained, unethical, and/or incompetent agents."I didn't want to pay someone who I felt was working against me, especially when I didn't see what they were bringing me in return. So I fired the agent and had a go on my own. I typed up my own bid form (all of 174 words) and kept an eye on StreetEasy, and a few weeks later I toured an open house.The price was out of my budget, but the unit had been sitting on the market for a few months. So I came in with a low bid, the sort of tactic my agent had discouraged. Rather than toss it out, the seller and I negotiated. By the time they said "best and final," the seller had carved six figures off the asking price. Not bad for my first negotiation. Just before closing, while on a walkthrough with the seller's agent, I asked how my representing myself had affected things. He was candid: "Not splitting the commission meant they could do $50,000 lower." Like so many sellers, the prior owners had baked my agent's 3% commission into the selling price, and without it, I could save the difference. $50,000 is $50,000.The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/lawsuits-verdict-realtors-brokerages-real-estate-agents-home-buying-selling-2023-11">class-action settlement with the NAR</a> is going to make it a lot harder for sellers to be forced to pay for buyers' agents. Going forward, for people like me without an agent, a savvy seller may pay just 3% of the sales price to their own agent instead of 6% to be split with a buyer's agent. Some homebuyers may still want an agent, especially those who don't feel comfortable representing themselves or don't have the time, but faced with the prospect of paying directly for agents who offer less and less of an edge, I expect many more people will go their own way, and save tens of thousands of dollars in the process. Experts estimate that nationwide, after the NAR settlement, buyers may save up to $30 billion a year.A few weeks after I moved into my new apartment, I ran into my ex-girlfriend. I told her I had bought a place, and she was thrilled for me. Then I sheepishly added: "So, that whole agent thing, turns out you're right. It was a scam after all." She just beamed more broadly.<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/albert-fox-cahn">Albert Fox Cahn</a> is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or STOP, a New York-based civil-rights and privacy group.

The new first rule of home buying: fire your realtor

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The housing market is turning in buyers' favor as more sellers cut prices.</li><li>The number of homes that saw a price cut rose to 19.3% in August, per Realtor.com.</li></ul>The housing market looks like it's starting to tip in buyers' favor.That's because more homes on the market around the US are seeing price cuts, alleviating some pressure on buyers who have been sidelined by elevated mortgage rates and record-high home prices.The number of homes for sale that saw a price cut in August rose to 19.3%, according to <a target="_blank" href="http://Realtor.com">Realtor.com</a> data. That's the highest proportion of homes that saw a price reduction during any August in the last five years, the real estate listings site said in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.realtor.com/research/aug-2024-data/">a housing market update</a>. Price cuts were the most concentrated in the West and the Midwest, the firm said, with the number of price reductions rising 3.5% and 3.3% in those regions respectively. But home prices also fell nationwide, with the US median home price dipping 1.5% to $429,990 last month.Sellers have been more open to cutting asking prices, likely because many are losing patience as their properties continue to sit on the market, the firm said. The average listed home spent 53 days on the market before being sold in August, a full week longer than homes sold in August of last year."A growing number of homes on the market and rising share of price cuts indicate that today's housing market isn't as heavily tipped towards sellers as it has been in recent years," Danielle Hale, <a target="_blank" href="http://Realtor.com">Realtor.com</a>'s chief economist, said in a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/home-price-cuts-highest-in-5-years-august-2024/">statement</a>.Homebuying conditions have <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-outlook-home-prices-supply-shortage-inventory-mortgage-rates-2024-7">loosened up for buyers</a> over the last year, largely due to more supply slowly making its way to the market. Active home listings surged 36% last month, notching their highest level since the pandemic, Realtor.com said.Demand, meanwhile, has faded in some key metros. In cities like Miami and Austin — two <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-home-prices-correction-housing-market-buying-a-house-2024-7">boomtowns</a> that saw a surge of buyers during the pandemic — prices have dropped by as much as 11% over the past year, the firm said in a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-cities-where-home-prices-are-falling-the-most-2024-6">separate report</a>."The 2024 housing market has clearly been less frenzied than in prior years," Hale said.

Buyers catch a break — more homes on the market are seeing prices cut as sellers get impatient

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Home prices are being cut at the fastest pace in two years.</li><li>The share of home listings that saw a price cut rose to 18.9% in July, up 3.4% from last year.</li></ul>Homebuyers are finally starting to see the housing <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-recovery-outlook-mortgage-rates-lock-supply-rebound-jpmorgan-2024-3">market shift in their favor</a>, with home prices being slashed at the fastest pace in two years, according to <a target="_blank" href="http://Realtor.com">Realtor.com</a>.The share of available listings that saw a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/home-prices-falling-housing-market-outlook-inventory-supply-shortage-affordability-2024-6">price cut</a> in July rose to 18.9%, up 3.4% compared to levels recorded in July last year. Those cuts have helped push down home prices across the country, with the median US home price dropping from $445,000 to $439,950 last month, the real estate listings site said in a recent <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/real-estate-price-cuts-july-2024-tampa-charlotte-phoenix/">report</a>.Price cuts have largely been driven by lower demand, alleviating some of the imbalances that pushed prices to record-highs over the past year."First, rates remain higher than expected, which means ther eis less buyer activity," Ralph Mcluahglin, a senior economist at <a target="_blank" href="http://Realtor.com">Realtor.com</a> said in a statement. "Second, the prospect of lower mortgage rates coming this fall may have induced some buyers to wait. This combo has led sellers to lower their prices in order to attract more buyers."The <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.freddiemac.com/pmms">30-year fixed mortgage rate</a> dipped slightly last week, hovering around 6.7%. Buyers, though, are expecting rates to cool even more, especially as the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/interest-rate-cuts-september-not-july-inflation-federal-reserve-powell-2024-7">Fed looks poised to cut interest rates</a> in September. Among the metro areas tracked by Realtor.com, 47 out of 50 saw the share of homes that saw a price cut increase on a year-over-year basis. Cities in the Sun Belt region appeared to dominate in their overall share of price cuts. Tampa, Florida, saw the largest increase in price reductions over the past year, with 9.7% of homes on the market seeing a cut in July. It was followed by Charlotte, North Carolina, and Phoenix, Arizona, where 9.5% and 9.4% of homes on the market saw a price cut, respectively."These are places where sellers have had a good run over the past few years with rising prices, but with the effects of higher rates fully settling in, sellers are having to come back down to earth with their price expectations, McLaughlin added.Some real estate commentators are calling for a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-home-prices-correction-housing-market-buying-a-house-2024-7">more extreme price drop</a> in the Sun Belt, given that the region saw steep increases during the pandemic. Metros in the area could see as much as a 15% drop in home prices, one forecaster previously told Business Insider, pointing to signs that supply in the region was on track to start outpacing demand.

Buyers catch a break: Home prices just fell the most in 2 years     

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Earlier this month, a Toronto-based realtor came across a nearly $660 apartment listing on Facebook.</li><li>The catch? The person who posted the listing was looking for a roommate to share the same bed.</li></ul>Anya Ettinger likes to scroll through real-estate listings instead of social media in her downtime, which isn't a total surprise given she's worked in the industry since 2016.But earlier this month, Ettinger, a sales representative for the Toronto-based brokerage Bosley Real Estate, came across a listing on <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/how-to-sell-on-facebook-marketplace">Facebook Marketplace</a> that was unlike anything she'd seen before — and not in a good way.The listing, which she said has since been taken down, was for a lake-facing apartment in downtown Toronto that would cost 900 Canadian dollars, or about $657, a month. But, according to the listing, you wouldn't just be sharing the apartment space — you'd be sharing <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/guides/home/bedroom">a queen-sized bed</a> too. Ettinger was so taken aback that she shared the listing in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@aserealty/video/7292554133679262981">a TikTok video</a> that has over 613,000 views as of Wednesday."Just when you thought the Toronto rental market couldn't get any worse, it did," Ettinger says in the clip, before reading out the details of the listing."Looking for an easygoing female to share the master bedroom and the one queen-sized bed," she read out loud. "I have been previously sharing the bedroom which only has one queen size with a roommate I found on Facebook and it worked out perfectly."Ettinger went on to question why the poster hadn't invested in two twin-sized beds or even a king-size bed where they could set up a "pillow barrier.""This is so unhinged," she added.<h2>Ettinger says the listing paints a 'grim' picture of housing affordability across major cities</h2>Speaking to Business Insider, Ettinger said she'd seen enough questionable listings in recent years that there wasn't much that could still surprise her. But this definitely did.According to Ettinger, listings like this one are a result of the affordable housing crisis in Toronto. The cost of living in the city, she said, is hardest on newcomers, who move to Toronto for work or for family reasons with less than $2,000 in disposable income to spend on rent."They're stuck having a very unconventional setup like sharing a room or renting an unfinished basement," she said.<div type="image" title="Skyline of Toronto, Canada with airplane." height="3486" width="5229" msid="105425683" hostid="261" sizebytes="928476"></div>In many cases, Ettinger said, the newcomers are immigrants or young people, who agree to subpar living conditions like paying rent for a single bed in a busy houseshare out of necessity."In the neighborhoods that we see a lot of new immigrants move to, there are definitely listings and people that purposely purchase properties to convert them into rooming houses and will create relatively inhumane setups," she said.Some landlords and property owners, Ettinger said, are "capitalizing" off people who are arriving in the city with "very little" or who are living off of government stipends, which provide them with slimmer housing options.Ettinger said she doesn't know for certain if the Facebook Marketplace listing was posted by a tenant or a property owner, but either way, she said it paints a "dire" image of housing affordability not only in Toronto but in other major cities as well.Her thoughts on the housing costs in Toronto are in line with a report from the financial services firm UBS that was published in October 2022. As Business Insider's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/mortgage-rates-going-up-canada-housing-bubble-toronto-warning-us-2022-10">Alcynna Lloyd reported</a>, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ubs.com/global/en/media/display-page-ndp/en-20221012-ubs-bubble-index.html">data from UBS</a> showed that home prices in Toronto have more than tripled over the past 25 years, surging to a price level that's "not sustainable." To help combat the crisis, the city is aiming to build 40,000 new affordable rental units by 2030, and the mayor, Olivia Chow, hopes to increase that number by more than 20,000, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-housing-annual-summit-2023-1.6993867">CBC reported.</a>But as of today, Ettinger said the listing she discovered is just another example of how severe the housing crisis is. "It just paints a very grim picture of the affordability crisis that we're experiencing here," she said. "We're nowhere near New York's level of unaffordability relative to income, but it's pretty bad."

A realtor says a $660 apartment listing asking tenants to share a bed proves how 'grim' the affordable housing crisis is

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Metro areas in Florida and Texas are notching record rent declines, according to Redfin.</li><li>Construction in both states spiked amid a pandemic demand frenzy, contributing to the ongoing declines.</li></ul>Metro areas in Florida and Texas are seeing rent declines as landlords struggle to fill newly built units, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.redfin.com/news/rents-fall-in-florida-austin-june-2024/">Redfin</a> reported.During COVID, an overload of pandemic demand burdened housing and rental markets in both states, triggering a wave of construction. But with demand now falling away, rental companies have been left with too many apartments.In Florida, the city of Jacksonville notched its biggest asking rent decline since 2019, dropping 12.4% in June on an annual basis. Tampa notched a 6% drop, Redfin said, marking its largest decline on record.Orlando and Miami also joined the trend, with rent falling 4.8% and 3.8%, respectively.For Texas, Austin was the standout metro. The city's median asking rent dropped a record 12.6% year-over-year, the biggest decrease of all 33 metros tracked by Redfin.Both states continue to be the country's leading building permitters. Between 2021 and 2023, Austin issued the most multifamily building permits per 10,000 people in the entire US, the report said."With so much supply on the market, renters may be able to get concessions like free parking or discounted rent," Redfin senior economist Sheharyar Bokhari said in the report.Meanwhile, the national median asking rent reached a two-year high — in June, it rose 0.7% on an annual basis, reaching an average of $1,654.The largest rent hikes are hitting the Midwest and Northeast, given that these regions are not building apartments at the same pace as other parts of the country.In some ways, the sharp declines seen in Florida and Texas are corrections from rent highs seen during the pandemic, Redfin suggested. For instance, heavy demand caused Tampa's rent appreciation to more than double national growth in 2022.Redfin previously reported that this has impacted the housing market in both states as well, as COVID-era prices have fenced off many would-be homebuyers. Most metros with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/falling-home-price-locations-us-housing-market-supply-florida-texas-2024-4">falling home prices were located in Florida and Texas</a>, Redfin found in April.Pushing demand out are rising insurance costs as well. In a spring survey, the firm found that close to three-quarters of Florida homeowners faced climbing insurance costs, given increasing risk of climate damage.In fact, <a target="_blank" href="http://Realtor.com">Realtor.com</a> found that this was a problem shared among <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cold-housing-market-deals-bargains-florida-texas-louisiana-homebuyer-inventory-2024-6">Florida, Texas, and even Louisiana</a>. Markets in these states are the nation's "coldest," the agency wrote last month.

These 2 states are seeing record rent declines even as prices rise nationally

<ul class="summary-list"><li>US home prices are falling faster as sellers try to entice buyers fatigued by high mortgage rates.</li><li>The share of homes on the market that saw a price cut rose to over 16% last month, per Realtor.com.</li></ul>Home buyers may start feeling some relief soon, as <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/home-prices-drop">house prices</a> in the US are being <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/home-prices-falling-us-housing-market-outlook-crash-mortage-rates-2024-6#:~:text=Home%20prices%20are%20falling%20at,stubborn%20interest%20rates%20slash%20demand&amp;text=Home%20prices%20are%20dropping%20thanks,week%2C%20hovering%20above%207%25.">slashed at faster clip</a>.The share of homes for sale that saw a price cut rose to 16.6% in May, according to <a target="_blank" href="http://Realtor.com">Realtor.com</a> data, up from 12.7% in the same month last year.Price cuts are also taking place in more markets across the US, with 46 of the 50 largest metropolitan housing markets seeing a price cut last month. That's up from just 44 metro areas the prior month.Price declines are largely attributed to the growing number of homes sitting on the market. Housing inventory rose 34.2% year over year in May and listed properties spent an average of 44 days on the market before sale, Realtor.com said."With greater inventory and a slower time on the market, it is possible that price growth might continue to decelerate further until the market sees a meaningful decline in mortgage rates," Sabrina Speianu, <a target="_blank" href="http://Realtor.com">Realtor.com</a>'s economic-data manager, said in a note.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/home-prices-falling-housing-market-outlook-buying-a-home-redfin-2024-6">Price cuts</a> are good news for homebuyers who have been waiting for the housing market to loosen up. According to Redfin data, home sales slumped to one of the lowest levels on record in May, largely due to high mortgage rates and record-high home prices.The median home price in the US rose to a record high of $439,716 in May, per Redfin. Meanwhile, the 30-year fixed-mortgage rate eased last week but remained close to 7%, according to Freddie Mac.

Home prices around the US are being cut at a faster pace as inventory piles up

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Wall Street isn't to blame for the non-stop rise in housing prices, according to Capital Economics.</li><li>The research firm said any legislation designed to block hedge funds from buying homes won't lower home prices.</li></ul>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/home-prices-housing-market-inflation-us-economy-mortgage-rate-fed-2024-3">ongoing rise in home prices</a> shouldn't be blamed on Wall Street, according to a Thursday note from Capital Economics.The firm highlighted that the growing criticism of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/home-equity-investments-heloc-refinance-loan-investors-homeownership-housing-market-2024-2">institutional investors buying up single-family homes</a> is leading to potential legislation in Congress that would heavily tax hedge funds if they purchase investment properties.The worry is that a surge in big investors buying up single-family homes is driving up prices, exacerbating a shortage in housing, and preventing younger people from becoming first-time home buyers.But according to Capital Economics property economist Thomas Ryan, proposed legislation that would prevent Wall Street from buying up homes would do little to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/housing-market-home-prices-values-zillow-outlook-mortgage-rates-inventory-2024-4">curb the record surge in home prices.</a>"We are skeptical about the effectiveness of such a policy in curbing house prices. That's because investor purchases make up only a small portion of all home sales," Ryan said.Ryan highlighted that of the 425,000 homes that were sold in June 2022, investors only accounted for 12% of transactions. And most of those investor purchases were concentrated in small "Mom and Pop" investors who rent out a small number of properties close to their primary home.Those small investors wouldn't be impacted by any legislation from Congress, which means the legislation would do very little to curb home prices."Even in 2021-2022, large institutions — defined by Realtor.com as those who have purchased more than 50 homes since 2001 — represented only one-third of all investor purchases, a proportion that has since slipped to 13%. To be clear, that's 13% of the 12% of homes that were purchased by investors, not 13% of all homes sold. Alternative investment giant Blackstone is one of the biggest institutional buyers of single-family rental homes. They own just over 60,000 homes, or about 0.06% of the 105 million single-family home market in the US. Blackstone <a href="https://www.blackstone.com/housing/our-track-record-in-housing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">says altogether,</a> institutional investors own a collective 0.5% of the US housing market.Those numbers, which are spread across countless regional housing markets, aren't big enough to have a sizable impact on US housing prices.Instead, growing demand for homes from millennials and younger generations is driving the demand boom for homes, coupled with not enough homes being built in the decade after the housing market crash. "With their small national market share, claims that large institutions inflate house prices seem exaggerated. In our view, lawmakers are looking for a new scapegoat to blame for unaffordable housing. Therefore, even if the bill passes — which is unlikely in itself given other political priorities – it won't do much to lower house prices," Ryan concluded.

Don't blame Wall Street for jacking up home prices, economist says

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The median US listing price increased to a new all-time high of $405,000 in March and mortgage rates rose to 4.42%.</li><li>As prices climb, buyers are finally getting fed up and demand is waning. </li></ul>Homes just keep getting more expensive — but signs point to a possible power shift, with some buyers seeing hope on the horizon.According to <keyword id="13517141" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="realtor-com" source="Orion">Realtor.com</keyword>, the median US listing price increased to a new all-time high of $405,000 in March — that's a 13.5% increase since this time last year. As prices climbed, buyer demand finally began to wane after two years of red hot competition. Of course that means many Americans are priced out of the housing market completely, but those left could finally gain some power. "Buyer demand is moderating in the face of high costs, and we're beginning to see more homeowners take price cuts on their listings and overall inventory declines lessen in response," Danielle Hale, Realtor.com chief economist, told Insider. Though the average listing price was $405,000, 6% of homes actually sold at a lower price than they were listed.Overall in March, the housing market began to show signs of moderation. Newly-listed homes decreased by 3.4% year over year and sellers listed rates 12.2% lower than they did from 2017 through 2019 March levels. As demand faltered, the number of pending listings declined by 7.4% on an annual basis, suggesting the market is softening as buyer competition eases."Despite the $405,000 price tag, March data reveals we are starting to take some steps towards a more balanced market," Hale said, adding that potential buyers should aim to find a home now — before interest rates increase further.<h2>If you can afford to buy at all, now's the time</h2><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/rising-rates-and-low-supply-pushes-affordability-to-new-lows-2022-2">Mortgage rates</a> have returned to pre-pandemic levels: 4.42% for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan, according to <keyword id="12650894" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="freddie-mac" source="Orion">Freddie Mac</keyword>. That's significantly up from a pandemic low of 2.68% in December 2020, and means homeownership is getting even more expensive. As the cost of homeownership rises, homeowners are slashing their asking prices. According to Realtor.com, the share of homes with price reductions increased from 5.8% in March 2021 to 6% this year. Although the rate remains below typical 2017 to 2019 levels, researchers say that twenty-five of the nation's largest 50 metros saw the share of price reductions rise in March — compared to just 18 in February."For buyers still actively searching for a home, this could provide some relief as competition declines," Hale said. If rates do rise further, Hale says buyers already concerned with affordability are likely to be priced out of the market. However, with less buyer competition, the amount of homes available for sale could largely increase and reduce pressure on <keyword id="11985139" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="home-prices" source="Orion">home prices</keyword>. This in turn should help the market regulate itself and boost homebuyer purchasing power. "Assuming all these factors and new construction hold steady, we could begin to see inventory increases this summer – welcome news for buyers who have endured pandemic home shopping and can continue their journey despite higher buying costs, " Hale said.

You Searched For "Keystone Realtors share price" and got 9 results

Realtors are fighting over hidden listings. Their battle could make it harder to find a home.

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Buyers catch a break — more homes on the market are seeing prices cut as sellers get impatient

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Buyers catch a break: Home prices just fell the most in 2 years

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A realtor says a $660 apartment listing asking tenants to share a bed proves how 'grim' the affordable housing crisis is

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These 2 states are seeing record rent declines even as prices rise nationally

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Home prices around the US are being cut at a faster pace as inventory piles up

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Don't blame Wall Street for jacking up home prices, economist says

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If you can afford a $405,000 home, now is the time to buy — mortgage rates will only go up from here

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