I'm not sure if you caught this yesterday it was a bit buried but NAR settled a lawsuit brought on by the government. In a nut shell NAR, its member organizations, and members were not allowing access to all of its listings to web based and discount brokers. The lawsuit was filed in 2005 by the justice department in what seemed to be by the prodding of Zillow, Cyber Homes and a few web based Internet brokers. They claimed an unfair playing field by not having access to the entire database of NAR's MLS listings and the complete data of each listing.

By settling they allowed all discount & web based brokers full access to all listings. However it was not a complete victory for web brokers because NAR will still be allowed to limit comments and some price comparisons.

So what do you think? Is this good or bad for your business? Will traditional brokerages be affected? What will this do to the individual Realtor? What do you see as the future of real estate?

For complete details of see the link below.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=anuFn3WDukYg&refer=new