What He Said

For awhile now, I’ve been trying to explain to people how the National Association of Realtors is really a gigantic drain on society: housing is overpriced around here, and commissions are obscene, and that money could be more productively invested in things like home improvement, housing construction, junk bonds, or malt liquor and prostitutes. This is particularly obvious in Boston, where the housing crisis could probably be alleviated by replacing broker’s offices with apartments, where every FSBO seller’s phone rings off the hook with realtors trying to convince them to use an agent, and where apartment websites are filled with no-fee listings that realtors will always say have “just been rented, although there is one in the same neighborhood that’s full-fee…”

I tried to write an article about it several times in the past year, but someone else finally did it right: Douglas Gantenbein, who writes for Slate and The Economist. It’s nice to be agreed with by someone with those credentials, but I kind of wish I’d said it like that before.