- sale by owner without a realtor is a thing (at least many places?)
- all you need to do to be "them" is take a test and get a license, right? I.e. if as a buyer willing to pay 6-7 figures for a home, the cost of getting that license is negligible. If you wanted to recoup the buyer agent commission, you could represent yourself and do so.
Like, you also need a license (or multiple) to operate a restaurant, and it's really hard to do a prepared-meal-for-money transaction without one side of the transaction being such a license holder ... but we wouldn't in general say that restaurants are a "cartel" in virtue of this fact, because there's healthy competition.
> sale by owner without a realtor is a thing (at least many places?)
Realtors are not allowed to help you buy FSBO properties. If you have a contract with a buying agent (which most will require) then you can't buy an FSBO. So basically you have to choose -- get access to the 97% of listings that are done by Realtors, or the 3% that are FSBO (and get no help with it).
You also can't buy a house listed by a Realtor without your own Realtor.
That is why it is a cartel. Because the monopolize the listings and then refuse to work with anyone not in their system.
And it's not that easy to get a Real Estate license.
To your restaurant analogy, imagine if you could only eat in a restaurant if also owned one and had a restaurant license. It would be similar to that.
- sale by owner without a realtor is a thing (at least many places?)
- all you need to do to be "them" is take a test and get a license, right? I.e. if as a buyer willing to pay 6-7 figures for a home, the cost of getting that license is negligible. If you wanted to recoup the buyer agent commission, you could represent yourself and do so.
Like, you also need a license (or multiple) to operate a restaurant, and it's really hard to do a prepared-meal-for-money transaction without one side of the transaction being such a license holder ... but we wouldn't in general say that restaurants are a "cartel" in virtue of this fact, because there's healthy competition.