what you've said on the internet about Commission is there forever, forever, forever

Many times, over the last few years, in my experiences on Trulia and Zillow, someone will ask the question of we Realtors "What's the standard commission in your area?"

Most of the time, good agents jump in and state: "There is no 'standard', real estate commissions are negotiable"... and go on to expound on the value of finding a good Realtor, and not allowing the commission to be your largest criteria in selecting a Realtor. We can go into more of that, but that's a different post than this one.

Almost without fail, at some point or another on that thread, some idiot Realtor will say... "standard commissions in our area are 6%, but I'll do it for 5%, call me!!" or "everyone in our area charges 5%".  A few of us will try to explain to them that even the discussion of commission amounts, in public (and social media IS public) is a violation of Sherman anti-trust laws, and we inevitably get into a heated discussion over whether indeed that's true or not.  In some of those conversations, I've been told by Realtors who've been in the business for a long time (so, what I'm saying there is ... not some "newbie")... that I don't know what I'm talking about... that we're just talkin' in generalities... and there's nothing wrong with that.

One agent went so far as to tell me that he'd been playing in the Sherman Anti-trust sandbox for 32 years, and he knew it better than I did...so basically shut-yer-pie-hole.

Well, in a fairly recent "thread that wouldn't die", we had that same hackneyed conversation (deja vu, deja vu, deja vu vu).  But this time, one of the Trulia regulars (a non-Realtor) decided that he would find out the truth, and sent a copy of the conversation off to a Washington advocacy group.  They, in turn, turned it over to the Department of Justice, who contacted him by phone, confirmed that it was an illegal discussion, and asked a lot of pointed questions... (including the url for the conversation) and are now monitoring.

I imagine there will be handful of interesting phone calls to managing brokers.  What you say on a social media website, especially as a professional Realtor, is there forever (and ever and ever)... make sure that what you say is correct, and legal.