FRONTLINES
Industry News
REALTOR®group sues Internet listing service
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.--The battle over Internet scraping hit the courts in mid-March when the REALTOR® Association of Greater Fort Lauderdale sued Property America Corp., an online host for real estate listings, for copyright infringement.
For a fee, Property America hosts Web sites for salespeople, who give their home listings to the company. The company adds those listings to other listings on the site, which consumers can view at no charge.
Ray Glynn, broker and co-owner of RE/MAX Partners in Fort Lauderdale, said he became concerned after salespeople who had paid Property America for a site saw their listings posted without their names. “It’s no different than if we launched a soda company and bought cases of Coke, stripped off the name, and called it Ray Glynn soda,” Glynn says, as reported in an article in the Legal Intelligencer.
Attorneys on both sides are now in the discovery process, and no time frame has been set for court action, says an association spokesperson. At its February meeting, NAR’s Board of Directors voted to provide legal action funding for the Fort Lauderdale association.
In hot markets, young households paying cash
The booming economy and hot housing market of the past several years have changed the face of buyers who pay cash for their home.
Seniors have tended to be the most likely to buy with cash. They’re often sitting on top of proceeds from the sale of a house on which they long ago paid off the mortgage. Visit any retirement community, and you’ll find that at least 50 percent of the homeowners paid all cash, says real estate columnist Robert Bruss.
But now high-tech and other big growth areas are seeing a high percentage of all-cash buyers, fueled by cash-rich young households looking to get an edge in hot seller’s markets. Statewide in Florida in the past two years, more than 20 percent of all homebuyers paid cash, American Banker reported.
In California, cash buyers averaged about 10 percent of all homebuyers in 1997 and 1998, according to the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.
The number of cash buyers also jumped in Memphis, Tenn., especially in the high-end price ranges, as executives from around the country poured in to fill jobs in the area’s high-tech and other growth industries. MLS figures compiled by the Memphis Area Association of REALTORS® show that for the first half of 1998, there were 14 cash sales in the $400,000–$500,000 price bracket, up from 11 in 1997, and 17 cash sales at $500,000-plus, up from 10 in 1997, according to a report in The Commercial Appeal (Memphis).
Board asks REALTORS®to stop discussing schools
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md.--In what may be a preview of how local officials around the country will cope with rapid-growth issues, school board officials here have asked practitioners to stop talking about one of the first things households with children look at when buying a home--schools.
Officials have been grappling with the area’s rapid growth and escalating student population by aggressively building new facilities and redrawing jurisdiction lines of existing schools, keeping local school district boundaries in flux. Now, concerned about complaints from parents being given wrong information about which school serves an area, officials in mid-March voted to ask practitioners not to say anything about schools and instead refer inquiring clients directly to the school board.
To local REALTORS®, the action looks like a deflection of responsibility, says Greg Milward, chief executive of the Greater Capital Area Association of REALTORS®. The problem hasn’t been with REALTORS® giving out bad information but with how quickly boundary maps distributed by the school board become outdated. As a matter of practice, REALTORS® already tell clients to verify school information with the board, which operates a hot line for queries. But the line is manned only a few hours a day, Milward says.
Practitioners are coping with the confusion by adding an escape clause to purchase offers that make proposals contingent on verification of school information.
