NAR, Rob Hahn, Steering & Fiduciary Duties

Anthony Lamacchia:

Steering anti-trust. Oh, my God, don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about anything that is relevant to real estate brokers and realtors, because that is scary, folks. That’s some of the talk since I was on stage at DNR’s midyear meetings on Monday, and a little bit of action came up in the room. And since then, a gentleman by the name of Rob Hahn, who’s someone somewhat of an industry hater for many, many years, sent out a tweet that I’m going to show you in a minute, and then I’m going to tell you what really happened.

But first, let me tell you some other things I’m going to go over. I’m going to get into in much more depth what fiduciary duties are. I’m going to talk a little bit about steering and what steering actually is. I’m going to talk about how the new date that things go into effect with the new with the settlement is August 17th.

Zillow came out with a touring agreement. Will Fannie and Freddie and FHA ever allow the financing of commissions? That’s a question that’s come up. And folks, remember what I’ve been saying since October. The new system was going to be harder or harder on first time buyers, veterans in particular, right? Well, guess what? A news company down in South Florida did a story on it with a veteran in it, and the veteran said exactly what I’ve been saying since October.

Then I’ll also give you a litigation update. So let’s jump to this tweet by Rob Hahn. Okay. Multiple confirmations now of a major brouhaha at Nar mid-year meetings at the MLS Policy Committee. Apparently, there was a masterclass taught by Anthony Lamacchia on how to engage in steering, which led to a number of MLS execs declaring that they are leaving the room in light of all of the antitrust advice being given and walking out.

Maybe Mr. Lamacchia wants to remind me again how I don’t understand what steering is. Okay, folks, where do I start? The amount of lies, exaggerations and just things that aren’t anywhere near accurate in this tweet. And funny enough, right before I was starting to film, a half an hour ago, about nine people texted me that Mr. Han put out one of his long blogs.

That’s what he does. Sits home all day and writes long blogs, and I read through it. And honestly, I didn’t think it was that bad. I didn’t really feel like it was necessarily an attack on me, even though my name was in the subject. One part really got me frustrated though, and this leads into what I’m going to say when I pick apart the tweet.

After the panel, Lamacchia was hustled out of the room surrounded by Nar handlers so that no one could ask him questions. That is 100% false. That’s a complete lie. If anyone told him that and he typed it, they’re lying to him. His sources are wrong. If anyone even told him that, I tend to doubt they did, because anyone that was in the room know that nothing of the sort happened.

So let’s talk for a few minutes about what really happened. Okay, I’m on stage and I’ll admit I was I don’t want to say I was late getting in there. it was supposed to start at 1150 or 1250, and it started ten minutes early. Okay. At 40 past the hour, I’m outside on the phone dealing with a family problem.

I get called in. I rushed to stage. Everybody’s up there, I’m like, oh my God, I’m late to be on the panel. I sit down, there’s a podium next to me in the gentleman who was running it. Ryan, who did a terrific job, was close to me. So I have a view of the entire audience. There’s at least a thousand people in the room.

I sit down, I’m a little flustered. Right. But it was okay. He asked me a question. Others chimed in. Others on the panel did terrific. Then he came back to me and he asked Anthony something to the effect of don’t quote me on the words, but it’s something to the effect of Anthony. You’ve been quoted as talking about the importance of fiduciary duties.

Can you answer as a broker how you handle that with your agents and how you recommend that other brokers handle it? So what I went on to discuss is something very similar to what I had done in an Rys media, webinar back in, I want to say January. And that was the beginning of Han really jumping all over me and saying that I was promoting steering, which is completely false.

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