Comments about ‘Utah Realtors Association a powerful lobby group’

Go Realtors! Keep protecting my right to own a home. Thank you.

Too many developers and real estate lobbyists are influencing governmental leaders on a state, county, and local level. These lobbyists are costing taypayers millions of dollars when decisions are made that benefit the developer and not the taxpayer. For example, developers are running South Jordan government, who will zone land for high density developments rather than allow them to be developed by businesses, which would then pay property taxes that would benefit the schools and help to reduce property tax increases.

Voters should carefully study the influence that developers and the real estate lobby is having in their cities, state, and communities.

They're not protecting your right to own a home. They're buying the rights to build a McMansion in your backyard.

Citizen, how happy are you that real estate agents take 6% of the sale of your property?

On a house worth $200,000 your agent gets $12,000. Not a bad profit for a few hours work.

No wonder there is plenty of money for lobbying.

Realtors are worthless, if you just ask the right questions to your loan officer or whoever you use to finance the property or the title company they can help you.

If you feel you need pay an extra 6% use a realtor, but most of the time learning about the process yourself easily pays off.

There are a few good realtors that actually know what they're doing, but most have second jobs as grocery baggers.

Wow, Worthless, you've met every one of the 1.3 million Realtors out there! Incidentally, I've never met a Realtor that gets 6%. They may get 3%. Or 3% less the split they have to pay their Broker. And the advertising to sell your property. Oh, and the 3-4 months they invest in the process before they get paid, IF (and that's a big IF these days!) the deal closes. As to your statement regarding the "helpful" lenders and Title people, they ARE helpful...within their specialty. Title people are by definition neutral in a transaction. They can't help you much beyond their instructions. Ask one if the home is priced right before you purchase. Ask one how the schools are, or the crime rate, or the appreciation.... What will they say? Make sure you ask those "right questions" to your lender as well. I don't know about the Realtors you've met, you know, the other worthless 1,299,999 of them. I know I earn every bit of my commission, as I'm sure you earn every bit of the wage you are paid for whatever it is you do.

Worthless, maybe not entirely... but overpaid, most certainly. Their 6% commission has been around since 1940 when housing prices were roughly 2x annual income and there was no Internet or electronic means of researching properties for sale, neighborhood crime rates, quality of schools, etc. In those times, realtors actually did have quite a bit in terms of research to do in order to make a sale. Today home prices are about 4x annual income and purchase research is fairly easy with the Internet. Realtors literally poor money into washington and local governments is to protect their 6% monopoly and have been fairly effective at doing so. With the help of the Internet and some very fed up consumers, hopefully we can change this sometime in the near future.

They get 6% if the realtor acts as the buyer AND seller agent. My friends just sold their home and paid their agent $12,000 (6%) as the buyer and seller agent. He made out like a bandit. I've not met a truly honest agent who is looking out for my interests, they seem to always look out for closing the deal so they can get paid.

That's why I've sold my homes by owner. It's worked well for me and I keep the money. My real estate college courses help me know what to do. Thanks anyway!

It was fascinating to discover that the Utah Realtor's Association was a major contributor to my opponent, Rep. Curt Oda (R-Clearfield) who went on to win as a Republican to the State Legislature. I always wondered what the Realtor's Association gained by their support of Rep. Oda.

For what reason is there a major group of realtors have established themselves to run our government office holders? This group is also comprised of developers, land speculators, and contractors.

The only reason is to break and destroy the zoning codes of cities, counties, and the state so developers can build where they are not supposed to build. They have insured that homes are never inspected or built to code during construction and even if caught they just move on under different names with all the same policies as before. This board has insured there are laws in place to protect themselves from legal action when fraud or faulty homes have been built.

Also to write and control mortgage and lending laws to protect themselves from bad deal mortgages and development. Has anyone noticed that builders, contractors, and land speculators and realtors have laws in place that allow them to defraud the home buyers? Consumers are at their mercy with no protections from fraud in the realty market.

They do make a lot of money with no liabilities of their actions and very cost effective to make large donations to our politicians to ensure their fraudulent ways are protected.

Looks like the real estate group is out in force on the message board.

I have yet to meet ANYONE that is happy with the job their realtor did for them.

This lobbying group is what is destroying our state.

The one thing that would save our schools and communities is to impose impact fees on new houses. These fees pay for the new schools needed to teach the additional children. The realtor group has blocked repeated attempts at this. So who ends up paying? Look at your current property taxes and you'll see.

Not to mention all of the realtors that are actual legislators...

"Why" please feel free to share your actual name when making broad brush, libelous accusations. It makes it easier for those of us that apparently are controlling the world to find you!

mortgage interest deduction, which subsidizes and distorts the housing market ... Realtors should share in the credit and blame.

In essence they're just the middle men in a financial transaction--but many are way more ambitious than that. So, when they talk about protecting property rights does that include opposing the awful Supreme Court decision that allows government to forcibly take away someone's property because a developer (with a real estate agent to broker the deal) can make more money than you?

UAR stands for your right to build anywhere . . . risks be damned.