'Unfiltered': Doing this with commissions is ‘asking to be sued’
Watch the conversation as NextHome execs James Dwiggins and Keith Robinson share their experience with commissions lawsuits and what they think of workarounds.
NextHome CEO James Dwiggins has emerged as a significant voice on the topics that are shaping the real estate industry: lawsuits, innovation, leadership. But Dwiggins doesn't just answer questions, he asks them of guests on Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered, his podcast with Keith Robinson, NextHome's chief strategic officer.
On this week's episode of Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered, the show's hosts talk with each other about why commissions sharing needs to stop, and what agents should be focusing on instead.
"We run a very large company, so we're a named defendant in these cases," said NextHome CEO James Dwiggins. "We have a little more information than most of you do because we're working with antitrust lawyers. An extremely important piece of advice I'm going to tell you right now? Stop sharing commissions. Do not do cooperative compensation."
His co-host, NextHome Chief Strategic Officer Keith Robinson, acknowledged that change is hard — "especially change that's forced upon us." But change is necessary, he said.
See what they have to say about workarounds, and what brokers should know: Robinson said real estate professionals need to work on developing better business practices, not creating "crazy" workarounds.
"My favorite one that I've heard is, 'I know what we'll do. The last three numbers of the sales price, we'll just make that reflect, wink, wink, what we're willing to offer. Like the last three numbers will be 250 bucks and everyone will know what that means,'" Robinson said.
People will say the settlement allows for them to use non-MLS aggregator websites to share commissions information, but "you're absolutely asking to get sued if you want to do it," Dwiggins said. "I would advise you not to do that."
And to brokers, specifically, he says "you damn well better have a policy in place on how you want to handle this with your agents." If consumers file suit again, "it's not just the agents that are going to get sued."
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in the Real Estate Insiders podcast belong solely to the podcast creators and guests, and not Real Estate News.