God, NAR is such a cartel I'm so surprised they haven't been slapped down already. My theory is that, in many places, real estate agent is one of the last decen

God, NAR is such a cartel I'm so surprised they haven't been slapped down already. My theory is that, in many places, real estate agent is one of the last decent viable jobs left for a huge swath of people (and I say this generally despising real estate agents, but I've had the fortune of working with a few gems), so the legal system is wary of going after them. In 2005 NAR got their friends in the TX legislature to pass a law limiting what discount brokers could do - regulatory capture at its finest, and most blatant: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4963797 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=496379.... IIRC the feds actually sued to overturn this law on antitrust grounds. I think they were successful but using Google to search for non-current events can be extremely painful so I gave up.