Academic Research on Realtors Confirmed by 1983 Novel
A reader named Gerard Mulligan was good enough to let us know that a 1983 novel he was reading, Scenes From Later Life by William Cooper, contains a passage that, if the section from Freakonomics about...
View ArticleEven Jerry Seinfeld Can’t Avoid a Realtor’s Fee
And a N.Y. State Supreme Court justice says so. The post Even Jerry Seinfeld Can’t Avoid a Realtor’s Fee appeared first on Freakonomics.
View ArticleMeet the New Realtor: Google
Although it is in a fairly primordial stage, this new home-finding tool from Google may turn out to be as formidable a challenge to Realtors as the Department of Justice. It does little more than...
View ArticleThis Week In Reader E-Mail
Rarely does a reader express his sentiment so cogently as in this case, from one “Fred Peck”: Your article that tries to shed light on Realtors is probably the dumbest and most pointless thing I have...
View ArticleHow Much Is a Realtor Worth?
We’ve got a column appearing in the June 10 issue of the New York Times Magazine, which is a special issue on the U.S. wealth divide. Our piece deals with some interesting new research on real-estate...
View ArticleFreakonomics in the Times Magazine: Payback Time
Read the Column » Manipulation of Collateral Values by Borrowers and Intermediaries By Itzhak Ben-David Income and Wealth Effects of Italian Household By Charles Grant and Tuomas Peltonen Appraisal...
View ArticleFinally, Some Love From the Real Estate Industry
While it may be true that we have no fans at the National Association of Realtors, at least there is someone in the real estate industry — a commercial leaser in Memphis — that likes us. Enough, at...
View ArticleFreakonomics Quorum: Is It Time to Believe in the Housing Bubble?
Following last week’s quorum about street charity, we’ve now brought in a half-dozen bright people to address a very different issue: Is it finally time to believe in the housing bubble? And how much...
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Want to Jump-Start the Housing Market? Get Rid of the Realtors!
(iStockphoto) Okay, okay, that’s not quite the message of a new working paper by Panle Jia Barwick and Parag A. Pathak called “The Costs of Free Entry: An Empirical Study of Real Estate Agents in...
View ArticleHome Sales Even Worse Than Reported Says the Primary Agency That Reports Them
Far fewer homes have been sold over the past five years than previously estimated, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. That’s from a CNNMoney.com report by Blake Ellis. While NAR hasn’t...
View ArticleRealtorsRealtorsRealtorsRealtors!
Because we wrote this article, a lot of people are visiting this Web site to get our e-mail address to write in various comments. I’d suggest anyone who does so should feel free to post comments here...
View ArticleRealtors Get a Blog
The National Association of Realtors has started a blog. The lead item today is headlined “The Cost of Selling without a REALTOR?: $31,800.” Pretty scary, huh? Here’s the lead: “Real estate...
View ArticleMore Realtor News
The National Association of Realtors has more than its fair share of adversaries, including the U.S. Department of Justice (which is suing the N.A.R. for anti-competitive practices) and the Consumer...
View ArticleWhat Do the Natl. Assn. of Realtors and Genghis Khan Have in Common?
Nothing, except for the fact that I’m going to write about both of them here. A couple weeks ago, I posted about Thomas Robinson, an accounting professor at the University of Miami who, through...
View ArticleThe National Association of Realtors is right about this
I gave a speech at the PCBC builders conference earlier this week which Glenn Roberts, Jr. summarizes on the Inman News blog. (The link is to a subscription site, unfortunately. I could get to the...
View ArticlePity the Payday Lenders
I recently got an e-mail from someone who works for the Community Financial Services Association, the national trade group of payday lenders. She is unhappy that Congress wants to put a cap on the...
View ArticleCan’t Take a Step Without Meeting a Realtor?
In New York City, at least, it sometimes seems that way. Not long ago, we wrote a column about how a real-estate boom actually lowers median Realtor income because of all the new agents who rush in to...
View ArticleNote to Realtors: You May Want to Skip This One
In the interest of not piling on, I was initially reluctant to mention this working paper, posted on the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies website, about the flaws in the commission...
View ArticleThis Is the Sound of Chinks Appearing in Armor
There have been many discussions on this blog, probably too many, about Realtors. (Click here or here or here, or, if you’re really twisted, just type “Realtor” in this page’s search box.) The gist?...
View ArticleMore Bad News for Realtors, Part 819
I like to stop by the National Association of Realtors’ blog now and again to see what the N.A.R. is making of the many changes in real estate. A recent posting referred to a Harris Interactive poll...
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