Sotheby’s Real Estate Brokerage Firm - the US Department of Justice - and YOU the Real Estate Consumer

Why does the US Department of Justice not look into purchases such as the 100 million dollars that Cendant paid for Sotheby’s Real Estate Brokerage Firm in February of 2004?

This kind of acquisition affects you the real estate consumer, in my opinion as a Real Estate Broker owner – yet No One is looking. No one seems to find this alarming – I DO. This acquisition and many like it do hurt the real estate consumer but folks in the know seem to, for some reason, just look the other way.

News Clip from 2004

“Sotheby's Holdings, the owner of the auction house, has agreed to sell its 15-office real estate brokerage firm in the United States and the brand's licensing rights to the Cendant Corporation, owner of the Century 21 and Coldwell Banker real estate names…..For Cendant, the purchase of Sotheby's International Realty furthers an aggressive expansion of its interests in the New York market, where it bought the Corcoran Group, one of the city's largest brokerage firms, in 2001. It followed that up in 2002 with the purchase of the Sunshine Group, a marketer of new luxury real estate. Over all, Cendant, through its NRT unit, has bought about 270 companies in more than 30 cities.” Link to this Full Article Below.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E00EED7153DF93BA25751C0A9629C8B63

http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20040218_cendant.htm

They look into Yahoo and Google working together but not things such as this which directly affect the real estate consumer across the board. ONE company taking over such a huge corner of the real estate market means that they control what you, the real estate consumer thinks. They control lawmakers (believe it or NOT – just my Opinion), they control how agents in ALL their offices think – it is true.

The internet is a valuable tool, I know how to get real estate for sale on the Internet – easy and free – yet Corporate Heads at Cendant – Apollo – Coldwell Banker convince their agents that Realtor.com is where their consumers NEED to be and that this is Tried and True and is Very affective (It is affective for the Real Estate Website Owners in Which Cendant – Appollo – and NAR have part ownership in as well as sites like Homegain.

So when your Coldwell Banker, Century 21, ERA or Sotheby’s agent tells you that their marketing is tried and true and is better than your Idaho Horse Property for sale, for example being on IdahoHorseProperty.com THEY are simply feeding you a line to make sure they KEEP as much Internet Traffic to Realtor.com and related websites as they can because the really BIG money today is in Advertisers on their Website. And this has NOTHING to do with you Seller actually find and selling to you Buyer.

When One Real Estate Brokerage is as Large as Cendant is and No One is Looking at the possibly harm that this does to the real estate consumer, you – as a Real Etsate Consumer YOU are in VERY big trouble. You think your are exercising your right to Choose but instead you are going to the same company with your business. To Me this has Anti-Trust violation written all over it - but what do I know - I am NOT a Real Estate Attorney.