Wow.
Real Estate Lawsuit Overview
Real estate giant settles 72 million class action lawsuit. Crazy times that we're living in guys. On top of that, we're going to look at the REO of the week, mountain
Introduction
home view or mountain view home of the week and a market snapshot for San Jose. Let's take a look and see where we are.
There we go. All right, let's get into this. If you haven't heard of Keller Williams, which is one of the larger brokerages out there, franchise brokerages settled for 70 million in an antitrust settlement. Now, if you haven't been following it, if you haven't heard about it and I haven't heard me talk about it.
There's a bunch of lawsuits that are going on right now about how we handle commissions Traditionally, we always tell people. Oh, we just the buyers paid the buyers. They were just paid by the seller. Don't worry about this and that Some people got their feathers in a bunch
And they decided to say that's not fair.
Implications of the Lawsuit
A couple things, right? I'm all for change and I'm all for making it right and fair and equitable to everybody Now the buyer has to pay the commission. Not yet But it's still assumed that we're still doing the right things, but it's the way they were handling it Don't worry.
The buyer's agent gets paid by the seller And the nuance of this lawsuit is well, no the buyer pays the money It comes out of the proceeds of the seller But the buyer still pays The buyer's agent fee as well as the seller agent fee as well as all the closing costs because it comes out of the proceeds that are minutiae.
It's a lot of money. It's you know, it's a class action lawsuit And if you haven't heard what's going on There's one in Missouri that settled out and it was like 4, 600 plaintiffs Let me see if I have that number here Yeah, right here. It was, oh, sorry, 26, 000 plaintiffs. Of that, they made 1. 8 billion.
Now, I don't know, again, it wasn't disclosed as to what the class action lawyer is going to make on it. So it could be 10, 10%, it could be 5%, it could be 30%. It doesn't matter. The lawyer, the law firm gets 360, 000, or if it's 10%, they get 180 million. That's legacy money right there. That's just a lot of money.
That's going on. Now, if you're one of the plaintiffs, you get a whole whopping 6, 000 out of it. And then you have to pay taxes on it. So really nobody wins and a lot of people lose because of what's going to happen. What could happen is that the buyers now have to pay the buyer's agent commission.
And that surely would happen in a VA or USDA, but then the V the veteran. Using the VA loan isn't allowed to come out of pocket for any extraneous fees, which means the buyer's agent is an extraneous fee. So where does that leave us? We're overpaid. We don't get a commission. We don't get a salary.
It's run like a business. So if you go and buy a sandwich at the store, which is like 18 now, the owner has to split those costs with everything, right? The broker, the transaction manager, marketing, all sorts of stuff. Cost of doing business, professional courses, continuing education, and they have to live off of that.
So yeah, we do make good money, but at the end of the day, it gets whittled down to not a whole lot of money, especially in places like that. California has a new lawsuit on it. We're, they're fighting it. I don't really care. I want to make it fair and equitable. I think the best thing we can say is change is good.
But Remax settled out a couple months ago. Another company settled out, I believe, and then Keller Williams just pulled out and said, yep, we'll settle out, give you 70 brokerages, which is why I stay away from the large brokerages because they're just big, huge lawsuit targets. I don't really dig into that.
Anyway, Facebook R E W T F of the week. Yeah, that's it. We've pushed this around a few times. It got a lot of push on it. A lot of comments. This is the second time I posted it, but just imagine staring at that wall stairs. Coming down at you and then trying to relax and you have people going up and down the stairs the whole time.
So yeah, there you go. REWTF of the week.
REO of the Week
So we have the REO of the week this guy right here. I wanted to look at it and this is in Los Gatos. It's really pretty. Area Los Gatos, if you don't know, this is just it was built and I think they ran out of money. It's completely unfinished. Look at that.
But that's a great view. There
you go. Its kitchens are already ready to go. It's basically a blank slate. They just, you're stuck with the walls and the rooms where they are. This could be a really nice-looking house. If somebody wants to buy it and it's all for sale right now for three and a half million dollars for a bedroom, four and a half baths, 4, 200 square feet on almost an acre or a third, two-thirds of an acre, four, three, five, six, Oh, four, three, five, six.
Oh, is an acre. So this is bank-owned. It's been on the market for six days. So if you're interested, let me know. Happy to take you to it. Not much you can do to get into it, but there you go. And then let's see, mountain view home of the week.
It's this guy right here. Now, for some reason, they started off with the
kitchen. Why would you start? You don't know what the house looks like. This is going for 2. 4, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1, 760 in Mountain View.
In Mountain View. It's been on the market for 35 days, but it's a really pretty house. It's a ranch. Standard ranch house for 2. 5 million, right? How did the prices get that high, Vito? I've been telling you this for the last Inventory is horribly low right now, horribly low. Our numbers are coming up as far as sales are concerned, but when it comes to supply and demand, the amount of demand far out measures the supply that's out there and people are being pickier because they're paying more for this house.
Now, look. That's all original.
They painted it. They updated it, but they didn't remodel it. You're basically getting a 1957 house that's been updated and they're asking a premium for it. So pricing matters guys. All right.
Market Snapshot: San Jose
Let's take a look and see what the 40 days on the market report or the market snapshot in San Jose are. We have 169 houses for sale right now.
On average last year, we had 255.
We're dreadfully low. And if you look at the number of active listings over history in Santa Clara County, at this time, we should be about, I don't know, about a thousand, maybe 800. We have 655 active homes for sale right now in Santa Clara. So we're dreadfully low, a lot less than last year, but that's because last year was just a wonky year.
We'll see these numbers pop up again, I believe, I hope, but I think what we're going to see is that these numbers will still stay low compared to the demand. We had 40 closes last year, averaging 35. Last year we averaged 60 closes a week. That, that's still really low for this market. But prices continue to go up.
If you look, they're continuing to wedge themselves up. Last year, the average sales price was about one five today. We're at one six, six, one right here. And even from last year, we're up a little bit. And then if I can make this bigger for you, there you go. Now you can actually see it last year. We had averaged 46 days on the market or 32 on average.
It actually came down, went down to 18, and now it's 19, right? Last year, this time was 32 days on the market average. Now it's 20 days on the market. So the demand is there. It's not firestorm demand, but we're still hearing that 300 people go through an open house. We still hear that houses get 25 offers and we do have houses that are selling for well over the list price.
Right as well as low, right? I think this is it right here. Yeah, this is this week's So you can just look at all these listings right here what they are listed for, and what they sold for 118 133 over the list price of 106. So we had 29 houses out of the 40 that sold over the list price. So there you go. That was quick and easy.
Down and dirty. Lawsuits, REWTF of the week, Mountain View House of the week, REO of the week, and San Jose snapshot. Hope these videos help. If you're thinking about buying or selling, let me know. I'm happy to talk to you about it. It's, the time to start talking about it is now if you're thinking about selling during the selling season, which is March, April, and May.
And I've been crazy busy with a lot of phone calls coming in, a lot of new
Conclusion and Contact Information
listings that I'm working on right now. And I'm super excited to share those with you when we come in and get them going. I'm Vito with Abitano. We'll see you out there.
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