Geoff Lewis, a lawyer for RE/MAX International, tells Inman News that he believes the proposed agreement to settle the DOJ vs. NAR antitrust lawsuit won't mean much for the industry or consumers, as Internet Data Exchange (IDX) sites already enjoy widespread use by industry participants and don't require registration to access data as Virtual Office Web sites would under the terms of the proposed settlement (see Inman News article today).

Is it too late for VOWs? "The response to VOWs hasn't been great because consumers can find sites throughout the Internet on which to gather information without having to register their name and contact information," Mark Lesswing, NAR chief technology officer, stated in a NAR announcement about the proposed settlement. But some say they expect the settlement will encourage VOW innovations.

There's disagreement on whether the settlement agreement could potentially lead to lower costs for consumers, and on a number of other issues addressed in the settlement.

Some interesting points in the proposed new VOW policy that will result from this settlement: "An agreement entered into at any time between the (MLS) participant and registrant (at a VOW site) imposing a financial obligation on the registrant or creating representation of the registrant by the participant must be established separately from the terms of use, must be prominently labeled as such, and may not be accepted solely by a mouse click."

Does this language prevent a company from offering exclusively Internet-based real estate brokerage services to consumers? What if the consumer presses the "enter" key on the computer instead of the mouse? Or uses a trackball?

And there's this: "the registrant (at a VOW site) acknowledges entering into a lawful consumer-broker relationship with the participant." But what is "a lawful consumer-broker relationship," and could registration at a VOW site potentially be a trigger for procuring cause claims?

There is a lot of other language in the proposed settlement that industry professionals will be pouring over in the weeks ahead. We've created a discussion group at the "Community" section of the Inman News site.

Please visit the group site to share your thoughts about what this settlement might mean for the industry and for consumers.

Also, check out an Inman poll on the topic here.

Another cool feature of the revamped Inman.com site is the ability to poll readers.

I'm wondering whether people think HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson's resignation will put the brakes on RESPA reform (click here for poll). If you're interested in RESPA reform, by the way, the membership of the new RESPA reform discussion group on the Community page is growing and the discussions are getting interesting.

If RESPA reform is not your thing, check out all the other polls that are open. Find out who people think is the best presidential candidate on housing issues, for example, and cast your own vote.

In November, 13 states decided either through ballot initiatives or legislation whether local governments must limit eminent domain (the right for a public agency to take land), pay property compensation, or both, according to a report in the May issue of Urban Land magazine. All but two of the efforts succeeded, and additional initiatives in Colorado, Missouri, Montana and Oklahoma failed to make the ballot in November.

The outcome of U.S. Supreme Court case Kelo vs. City of New London in June 2005 may have spurred voters and legislators to seek stronger property owners' rights. The Kelo decision found that a local government did not violate the "public use" section of the Fifth Amendment in condemning private property for a private-sector development. Critics said the decision was a blow to private property rights.

The article notes that passage of Oregon's controversial Measure 37 in 2004 is part of a broader property rights movement -- 23 states have pursued legislation or ballot measures to strengthen property rights. Measure 37 provides that if a property owner can prove that a land-use regulation restricts the use of the land and reduces its value, the government can "pay the owner of the property an amount equal to the reduction in value, or modify, change, or not apply the regulation to the owner's property."

Pacific Northwest planner Richard H. Carson, who wrote the article, doesn't have a sympathetic view of this property rights movement. Carson states, "Many of these initiatives are not homegrown, but rather funded nationally by conservative, out-of-state, nonprofit organizations. The result of passage of these initiatives will be more than the unraveling of the environmental and land use planning laws created in America in the 20th century. There is also a major economic impact to deal with," he states, based on the cost of claims, litigation and administration.

It's an old debate that's all-too-familiar: Who gets the better deal -- the homeowner who uses an agent or the one who braves it alone? According to two economists who studied the situation in Madison, Wisc., the answer is the owner who went without an agent. The study (linked here) concludes that people in Madison who sold their houses without an agent typically did not get a higher price than people who sold without an agent.

The study was based on local home sale data from 1998-2004, according to a write-up in the New York Times. Two economists, Igal Hendel and Aviv Nevo, pitted the city's biggest FSBO site, FSBOMadison.com, against the local MLS and found that homes sold via the MLS indeed sold faster, but that owners didn't necessarily get a better deal.

What isn't known is whether FSBOs would still be at an advantage in a downturn -- so the economists are undergoing further study of data for 2005-2006. Also, the study was conducted in one market, so it's impossible to say whether it would hold true in others.

The findings go against data from the National Association of Realtors which finds that houses sold via the MLS generally get 16% higher price over those not sold on the MLS.

(See Inman coverage today.)

It's interesting that this study comes out now while everyone is pondering the cost of real estate services in the wake of the "60 Minutes" piece on Redfin, which writes about the study on its blog today. Redfin took it on the chin from bloggers and agents when it said in February that it had stats to show its buyers on average got a better deal than buyers using a traditional agent. Many said the numbers were flawed.

FSBO data is hard to come by. According to NAR, the number of FSBOs has been declining over the years, but FSBO site operators say their user base has grown. In general, there's not a lot of detailed data about these transactions.

The success of a home sale depends on so many things: local market conditions, the unique situation of the seller (does he need to get out fast or does he have time to wait?). Does the owner have experience selling a house? Does the agent? These factors make it hard to say which way is the best to go in all situations.

Inman News wrote a story in 2005 about a Bay Area woman who sold her home using Craigslist. (See story here.) The owner, Shaina Varia sold her Union City, Calif., without an agent and said she saved about $50,000 in commissions. Readers were quick to point out that Varia was a corporate attorney, which perhaps gave her an advantage over a typical seller. She was selling in an extremely hot market, and also admitted she relied heavily on advice from agents.

Can you really sell ultra-luxury property for-sale-by-owner? Ask any full-service luxury agent this question and the answer will probably be a resounding, "No." Yesterday, however, USA Today reported that Ron Baron, founder of the Baron Funds investment company, paid a record $103 million for a residential property in East Hampton, N.Y. The price is strictly for the land and it supposedly sold without an agent.

Clearly, this was a "discreetly marketed" property, which many ultra-high-end sales are. The owners want absolute privacy about the transaction and rely on personal spheres of influence to push the sale rather than going public and listing. There's nothing unusual about commercial or industrial properties of this magnitude being sold directly without an agent. At this level, there are only limited number of players. In terms of residential real estate, however, this is unprecedented.

The typical arguments those of us on the full-service side make is that we can market the property internationally, we can provide better exposure throughout our national and international brokerage networks, and we can help the seller negotiate a higher price. The question in this case is whether these services and the potentially higher price are worth a $6 million commission. Clearly in Baron's case it was not. It will be interesting to see whether the Blixseth estate at Yellowstone Club or any of the other $75+ million listings follow suit.

--Bernice Ross, RealEstateCoach.com

"The standoff between buyers and sellers seems to have broadened into a standoff between the real estate industry and the media," writes fellow colleague Ron Roel, who worked as a reporter and editor at New York Newsday for 20+ years. Roel recently published a white paper looking at news coverage of the housing market.

Roel notes that it's been a rough year for housing coverage with the downturn making headlines. But another rough patch came last week in the aftermath of the "60 Minutes" expose on Redfin and real estate commissions.

Every so often, commissions become a hot topic and get picked apart by big media outlets: Are real estate commissions too high? What is up with that magical number, 6%? How can one company do this for 2% when others will not? They ask and the industry goes on the defensive.

Roel's analysis looks at coverage of the housing slowdown rather than commissions. At Inman News, we can certainly relate to those inevitable letters from readers saying "Why do you continue to cover negative stories about the housing market?" While we're not "big media" that drops in on housing coverage during a boom and bust, we often get accused of focusing on the bad news.

Roel, who is currently the co-founder of Real Estate Next, takes an in-depth look at the media blame game and interviews sources from the real estate industry, communications and academics. Read the full report here.

The Competition Bureau (Canada's equivalent to the U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division) is investigating the possible anticompetitive effects of multiple listing service amendments proposed by the Canadian Real Estate Association (Canada's equivalent to the National Association of Realtors).

The U.S. DOJ's Antitrust Division had conducted a two-year investigation of NAR's MLS policies related to the sharing and display of property listings before filing an antitrust lawsuit against NAR in 2005. That litigation is ongoing.

Canada's MLS requirements, which were scheduled to be considered at a March 24 meeting in Ottawa, are somewhat similar to Realtor-backed state measures in the United States that mandate specific services that real estate licensees must perform for clients, at least for some types of representation agreements. The U.S. DOJ and Federal Trade Commission have expressed opposition to some of those state measures but have limited authority when it comes to states' authority to pass laws.

It seems the two nations share more than a border in common. Which is why investigators for Canada's Competition Bureau are talking with real estate professionals in the United States.

RealtyTrac, a source of pre-foreclosure and foreclosure statistics, reported that Colorado had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation in December and for nine of 12 months in 2006.

Meanwhile, a review by the Colorado state Division of Housing found that "foreclosure numbers have been exaggerated by some organizations providing foreclosure data on the state," the Rocky Mountain News reported.

The state reported that there were about 1 in 58 households in foreclosure in 2006 compared to 1 in 75 in 2005, according to the news report, while Realtytrac found that the state experienced a rate of one foreclosure for every 33 households in 2006.

The Northern Colorado Business Report publication reported that RealtyTrac may have counted the same properties several times.

"Because of the transparency of Colorado's process, and the ease of retrieving records, RealtyTrac often flags multiple records on a single foreclosure case," the publication reported.

RealtyTrac marketing vice president Rick Sharga acknowledged in the article that the company may double-count or triple-count properties in some cases, though he said the company uses the same data-collection methods in Colorado that it does for other states. "On an apples-to-apples basis, we don't do anything differently in Colorado than elsewhere. It's a matter of getting more records and more efficiency in delivering them in Colorado," he stated.

The blog for Foreclosure.com, another provider of foreclosure statistics, recognized the potential for miscalculations in foreclosure data and reported that Foreclosure.com "made a strategic decision (in October) to not release monthly foreclosure statistics." The company stated in the blog item, "Now that the media is saturated with wild and unsubstantiated numbers -- 'doom and gloom, the sky is falling,' sells -- more than ever before, it validates our decision to take a step back and reevaluate how to proceed going forward. Fortunately, the media and local governments have started to scrutinize foreclosure numbers rather than accept them at face value." (See Inman News report on "Stats, lies and real estate.")