 You know what, I'm all suit everybody because I didn't get to pay my commission. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it is officially bizarre world here. We've got a group of buyers now, home buyers who just after the verdict came out with their own lawsuit on the buyers commission. Now this one, this one takes the cake right here because when you think about this one, I mean, here we are with the sellers. Okay, we're with the sellers on this whole trial up to this point. And they're mad because they're paying the buyer agent commission, you know, they're mad that it's baked into the price and they're paying it and all that when they're not, they're not paying it. Number one, the listing agent quoted the job 5% and they're paying out of that 5% the buyer's agent if there's one involved. And basically the seller, I mean, there's so many words the way that I, I mean, I haven't heard, you know, Michael Ketchmark or any of the other plaintiffs answer the question, what if there's not a buyer agent involved? Are you okay with the 5%? You seem to be at the time okay with what you were making, what your net figure was. What do you care what we do with the listing side commission with what you agree to pay your agent? You agree to paying 5%? It's like, why am I paying the buyer agent? You're not. You agree to pay your agent 5%, right? To get the job done. That's what he quoted you. That's what you agree to pay. Now we have a lawsuit here from the buyer side. And what the buyers are saying is that, well, I don't have any room at all to negotiate my commission because it's already been negotiated by the listing agent. It's already been put out there on MLS or whatever of what the buyer agent is gonna get. And I didn't have any room whatsoever to negotiate that. And guess what? That inflated my price that I paid for that house. Wait a minute. What are you saying here? Are you saying that you want to eliminate the fact that the selling agent, that the listing agent figures your agent's commission into the purchase price and you, Mr. Buyer, want to pay that outside of closing on top of the purchase price? That's what you telling me right now that you wanna pay it yourself. So you wanna switch it from the seller paying it, okay? Which is what everybody's saying is the seller's paying it. It's really the listing agent paying it. You wanna switch it from the seller paying it to me paying it. You know what? I'm gonna sue everybody because I didn't get to pay my commission. This is getting insane. All right, let's dive into this article here because I wanna kind of read you kind of what's, what this is all about. So you got all the details and everything. Five days after, okay? No, I'm sorry, that's a five. Days, days after home sellers win the 1.78 billion of verdict home buyers file a new suit, okay? So let's just, I just wanna read this to you and give you commentary along the way here as I hear things in this report. Days after Kansas City jury awarded the home sellers nearly 1.8 billion in damages over the real estate industry's commission structure, a similar suit on behalf of the people on the other side of the real estate transaction, home buyers was filed in a federal court in Chicago, which by the way, the Moore case trial will be starting early next year in Chicago as well. For decades, home buyers across America have been unwittingly paying too much for and receiving too little from the real estate agents to represent them reads the complaint, filed November 2nd in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against seven big national real estate brokerages. So I'm gonna tell you who those brokerages are in just a second, but hear what they say, okay? For decades, buyers have paid too much and receiving too little from real estate agents. Okay, well, don't use a real, why, okay. Then why are they using a real estate agent if they're too expensive and they don't get value out of them? Can we ask a home buyer that that is not incentivized by what they may or may not get out of a lawsuit? The brokerages rely on anti competitive commission policies from the National Association of Realtors. Their results in many buyers paying thousands of dollars more in commissions than they might otherwise. Yeah, because the buyer agent is being paid by the listing agent. So the buyer doesn't even come out of pocket. But wait, the buyer's bringing all the money to the table. So they're actually paying for it. But wait a minute, isn't the seller paying both sides or is it the buyer paying both? See, see now I'm just confused because you got one lawyer saying, why are the sellers paying the buyer agent commission? And then you got this lawyer for the buyer's agent saying, the buyers are paying the buyer's agent commission. So now the justice system and the courts really have a predicament on their hands here. You got a bunch of buyers over here saying, we're paying the buyer agent commission, we're paying too much. And on the other side, you got the sellers that were paying the buyer agent commission and we shouldn't have to pay it at all. When in fact, the listing agent is the one that's actually paying the buyer agent commission. That result in many buyers paying thousands of dollars more in commissions than they might have otherwise. Yeah, in what planet that they're gonna get representation at the highest form for nothing out of their pocket. Attorney's road on behalf of the seven recent home buyers, you got seven home buyers that say, let's go make us some money, Johnny. The issue is whether the customary 50-50 split between buyer's agents and seller agent locks out the possibility of buyer's agents working for less and still having access to all the homes that are on the market. See, yet again, we have this argument about the fact that homes can be found online and that so that should eliminate half of the agent's job. When in fact, finding a list of properties that the buyer might like online is literally the very beginning of the job. That's just step, that's step 0.01 out of a hundred steps for anybody who doesn't understand the process. Larger commissions, because they're wrapped into the buyer's overall purchase. Okay, I thought the seller was paying it. Okay, now they're wrapped into buyer's purchase, contribute to higher prices for homes. Attorneys from Chicago and St. Louis offices, law firm, Corrin, Tillery and Lowry of White Plains, New York wrote in their complaint. Okay, so what you're telling me is that you wanna extract the buyer's agent commission being included in the purchase price and you want to tack those on top of the purchase price. Yeah, that's gonna reduce the buyer's burden, the buyer's cost, what the buyer's actually paying for the house. Yeah, that works every time. They're requesting that the court certify the case as a class action lawsuit on behalf of anyone who's bought a home since 1996. They're requesting that the court certify the case as class action. Let's go ahead and get a lot of people in here so we can get a lot of money, old Johnny. Countless home buyers, their attorneys wrote, have been harmed by paying inflated prices for homes and inflated buyer agent commissions. The case claims the defendant's brokerages violate antitrust laws. Okay, when asked for comment, Redfin's media office sent a link to a blog post by the firm CEO, Glenn Kellerman, for our entire industry at congressional hearings and press conferences and appearances and sensationalized debates. And in public and private industrial meetings, industry meetings, we've campaigned timelessly for lower fees, commission transparency and broader consumer access to real estate listings, Kellerman wrote. Shortly before the Kansas City trial, Redfin withdrew from the National Association Realtors over both the commission issue and the swirling sexual harassment scandal at NAR. Redfin, Kellerman wrote, has been on the right side of history. The blog post written before this latest suit was filed does not directly address the latest suit. George Zelks, a Chicago based tillery partner and the lead attorney on the case declined to comment. Well, why wouldn't you comment, man? Of the defendant's brokerages, three have not yet responded to the publisher here's request for comment. The three that have not responded yet are Compass, Wykert and United Real Estate. A spokesperson for one of the defendant brokerages, Douglas Elliman said the firm declined to comment as well. So you got Compass, Wykert, United Real Estate. You also have EXP, you have Howard Hannah. Looks like that's it. So a press representative for EXP Realty emailed a statement that says, while we are still studying the formal complaint, we have been closely observing the ongoing antitrust litigation against our competitors in recent years. We're committed to upholding fair and transparent practices compliant with law. And we already have mechanisms and a plan in place that enables buyers and sellers to negotiate commissions. Howard Hannah's press office emailed a statement that says, in light of ongoing legal matters within our industry, we are actively monitoring the situation and will provide updates as necessary. We will continue to represent buyers and sellers in real estate transactions and remain committed to upholding our core values and guiding principles as a company. The Chicago case came two days, two days after the Kansas City Court found the National Association Realtors and a pair of big brokerages guilty of overcharging home sellers. They weren't guilty, see right there, weren't guilty of overcharging home sellers. They were supposedly guilty of conspiracy. A verdict that has been called an earthquake and a bombshell for its potential to remake the way Americans have bought and sold homes for more than a century. That same day, the Missouri lawyers who won the case filed another one for the sellers with a new set of brokerages as defendants, yep. So he filed another suit as well as, well, you guys all know that the defendants in that new Kansas City case for sellers are the same as those named in the new Chicago case for buyers. The second suit that Corin Tillery and Lowry Dangenberg has filed for home buyers is substantially similar to the first and the attorneys are likely requesting, combining the two into one large class action lawsuit against NAR and a total of 15 national brokerages. The first filed in 2021 named defendants, NAR and six national brokerages, including Realogy, now called Anywhere, the parent company of Caldwell Banker, Home Services of America, Remax and Color Williams. Those defendants filed to have the case dismissed arguing that home buyers don't directly purchase the services of an agent because sellers disperse the commission to their agent who then pass along half to the buyer's agent. That would mean home buyers have no standing to sue. In May, 2022, US District Judge Andrea Wood granted the defendants motion to dismiss. The plaintiff's attorney later resubmitted the case, rewritten to explain why they believe buyers do buy their agent services directly. It is essential the buyers who are the ones paying the money from which the seller disperses commissions. My gosh, man, these lawyers. Wood has not yet ruled on whether the case can go forward as resubmitted. If she allows it, the attorneys would presumably request to have that case rolled into one with the case filed last week against different defendants, which uses the same language only on buyers being direct purchasers. And then here is the actual paperwork of the lawsuit here. Guys, this is the wild world that we live in in today's world and I am all for it. Bring it on and people are saying, oh, you sound like you're happy about all this. No, I'm not happy about all this. I think all this is complete garbage and it should be thrown out of court immediately. But the fact remains that it's being let through. Whatever happens happens, we're not in control of it. All we can do is control what we do day to day. And you know what I'm gonna do? Continue to develop my skills to go out here and service more people and help more people buy and sell real estate, help more people learn how to help people buy and sell real estate, get better at anything that I'm trying to do because it doesn't matter what happens, I'll move right over to another industry if I need to and that's what's gonna happen. If they flip the switch, talked about this two videos ago and made every agent W-2 employee instead of 1099, that would crush the market immediately. If you think there's some bigger agenda here, like big tech is out to get real estate agents or the government wants to take us down or whatever the case may be, they could do it with the snap of a finger. They don't have to go through all this. They could just take us out of the game immediately and then what will happen? It'll be back to the people who were gonna leave the business who were just gonna leave real estate and go be an employee somewhere else. They'll just stay employed as a real estate agent, getting that little minimum wage or whatever they're gonna get and the true players of the game are gonna move over to something else and continue crushing it with all the skills they developed, learning how to market themselves, how to communicate, how to close. All the components of running your own business that a real estate agent has to learn how to do. They're just gonna take that and go somewhere else. That's what the winners do. They ain't worried about nothing. Throw a curve ball at me and see what I do. I don't care. Let's get it. See you in the next video.