Up in smoke: Greenwich Association of Realtors departs this earth
Received a message today from a friend who offered to contact the DOJ anti-trust division on my behalf – as the saying goes, he’s somebody who knows somebody.
And almost immediately thereafter I received this link, sent in by a reader: The DOJ is already interested in the issue.
I’ve written back to my friend saying that, for now, I’m hesitant to go that route because I’d be pulling down the temple on my own head as well as my friends at the GAR, but I’d reconsider, depending on how things go in the next couple of weeks. I certainly won’t go down alone, and it could be would be fun to watch the ensuing chaos.
UPDATE: a comment from an anonymous reader (a fellow real estate agent) reminds me how little most of my peers know about anti-trust laws. And why not? It’s more comfortable thinking, as the commentator does, that we’re just members of a merry little “sales association”, free to go our own way without regard to federal jurisdiction. And that’s an attitude both understandable and excusable in a mere agent, but pretty stupid when office managers share that ignorance. But they do, which explains why they see no danger in trying to shut down this blog.
Example: some years ago, a manager at a firm I worked for announced that she and her peers had held a meeting concerning the high cost of advertising in the Greenwich Time. The solution they’d come up with was to refuse to advertise in the paper for a month and advertising with a competitor instead. When I suggested that she and her fellow managers were about to engage in an illegal group boycott her eyes grew wide in surprise. I suggested that her group consult with the GAR counsel before proceeding and a week later, the plan died. So no harm no foul, but indicative of what the GAR owners (don’t) know about monopolies and anti-competitive behavior.
