{"id":69,"date":"2006-06-30T20:15:06","date_gmt":"2006-07-01T03:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2007-05-13T20:17:39","modified_gmt":"2007-05-14T03:17:39","slug":"lets-go-get-sued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/69\/lets-go-get-sued\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s go get sued . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

In a comment below<\/a>, Jon offers this:<\/p>\n

What are you talking about? Lawsuits against emongoo, zillow and refin? None of them are doing anything wrong…sorry to say. I looked at emongoo, zillow and redfins sites and I don’t see anywhere where they say they give legal advice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, I only cited legal advice with respect to emongoo.com<\/a> – and we’ll come back to that. We should exclude zillow.com<\/a> from this discussion, because, for now at least, they are doing nothing but running a look-up service with no legal consequences that I know of.<\/p>\n

But redfin.com<\/a> has considerable legal exposure, as does buysiderealty.com<\/a> and anyone emulating the general redfin.com business model. The first and most obvious problem is the legal doctrine known as procuring cause. These sites are a procuring cause lawsuit – or perhaps a procuring cause class action suit – waiting to happen. They go out of their way to flout the rights of cooperating brokers, openly advising buyers to see homes at open houses or by contacting the listing broker directly. The NAR Code of Ethics forbids brokers from letting a procuring cause dispute impede a transaction, but there is nothing to prevent the aggrieved broker from pursuing damages after the fact. I’m not saying this will<\/i> happen, but their noses are wide open.<\/p>\n

(As a side note, the way I read buysiderealty.com’s web site, their real business is loan origination. My guess is that the real estate brokerage side of the business will be one or more separate operating entities, with the broker being hung out to dry in the event of a lawsuit.)<\/p>\n

The entire discount sector of the real estate industry – on-line and brick ‘n’ mortar – faces huge risks on the subject of agency law. It is difficult to argue that you did everything possible to advance your client’s interests when you did everything possible to avoid knowing what your client’s interests actually are<\/i>. From the outside, you might want to shout caveat emptor!<\/i> But the law of agency in real estate is by now much closer to caveat venditor<\/i>.<\/p>\n

There is actually added risk for the discounters, as Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a comment below, Jon offers this: What are you talking about? Lawsuits against emongoo, zillow and refin? None of them are doing anything wrong…sorry to say. I looked at emongoo, zillow and redfins sites and I don’t see anywhere where they say they give legal advice. First, I only cited legal advice with respect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,5,27],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-69","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-disintermediation","7":"category-enduring-interest","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-redfincom","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10658,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10658\/whos-afraid-of-redfincom\/","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":0},"title":"Who’s Afraid of Redfin.com?","author":"Brian Brady","date":"December 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Bob Haywood, an Owasso, OK real estate agent makes a case for why you should be aware of Redfin.com.\u00a0 Bob articulates, from behind the cloaked wall on Active Rain, why Redfin.com is the REAL agent of change in the real estate industry.\u00a0 Read what Bob has to say: You should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":298,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/298\/shadowing-zillow-filleting-redfin-and-a-just-plane-smart-approach-to-change-in-the-real-estate-business\/","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":1},"title":"Shadowing Zillow, filleting Redfin, and a “Just Plane Smart” approach to change in the real estate business . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 7, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Dustin at Rain City Guide is giving stat-dancing lessons today. I am neither as talented nor as interested as he is, but I do have an interesting statistic to reveal: Debunking Zillow.com is averaging well over 100 unique hits a day. All of my extended Zillow rants do very well,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1574,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1574\/seven-days-of-the-dog-bloodhoundblog-is-the-real-estate-weblog-to-turn-to-for-hard-charging-hard-news-reporting\/","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":2},"title":"Seven Days of the Dog: BloodhoundBlog is the real estate weblog to turn to for hard-charging hard news reporting","author":"Greg Swann","date":"June 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"BloodhoundBlog is celebrating its first birthday this coming Friday, so I wanted to take a little time to highlight some of the best work we've done over the last twelve months. There is a limit to how much primary reporting a real estate weblog can do. The webloggers are each\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":281,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/281\/if-bill-clinton-ran-redfincom\/","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":3},"title":"If Bill Clinton ran Redfin.com . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Of the two \"innovative\" cowbird brokerages discussed in this morning's New York Times, the stronger of the two is BuySideInc.com. They're rebating even more of the buyer's agent's commission than is Redfin.com, but their actual profit center is in originating the loan -- a well-understood, fast, cheap, office-job function. Even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":236,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/236\/how-to-exterminate-a-cowbird-a-comedy-in-three-acts\/","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":4},"title":"How to exterminate a cowbird — a comedy in three acts . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 23, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Act I -- Why Realtors hate discount listings... People think ordinary on-the-ground Realtors hate discount listings because of the discount. That's may be true of many real estate brokers, but real-life Realtors have two much better reasons to hate discount listings. First, the Buyer's Agent will have to do all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1894,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1894\/why-do-traditional-realtors-despise-discounters-like-redfincom\/","url_meta":{"origin":69,"position":5},"title":"Why do traditional Realtors despise discounters like Redfin.com?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is me, guest-posting at Blown Mortgage while Morgan Brown is on vacation:So why is a limited-service listing unlikely to succeed? If you\u2019re in a high-demand market like Seattle, it just might. But in most of America, right now, a home must be marketed perfectly from the first day or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}