Starting this month, home buyers and sellers in the Charlotte area will notice changes due to a significant national legal settlement aimed at changing Realtor compensation.
This could result in lower commissions for agents and end the common practice of buyers' agents being paid by sellers — a practice that led to national lawsuits claiming it was anti-competitive and lacked proper disclosure.
For more on this and other business news, I’m joined now by Tony Mecia of the Charlotte Ledger Business Newsletter for our segment BizWorthy.
Chris Jones: Tony, first let’s dive into this a little more. How will this affect Charlotte home buyers and sellers?
Tony Mecia: You know, if you go to buy or sell a house, you know, for years it's been done a certain way. That way is changing in what is intended to be a way that's more transparent and that could result in lower fees by realtors. Traditionally, buyers of houses, their agents representing them have been paid by the sellers of the house. So that was viewed as anti-competitive, there was a big lawsuit nationally. That's now been settled and as a result, there are new measures that have been put in place to try to improve some of the disclosure around that. So I think one of the main things that you're going to see is that the buyers and the buyer’s agents, they're going to need to be a little more transparent. They're gonna need to have those conversations about compensation. The contracts are going to be different. The time that you have to sign a contract is going to be different. You have to do that earlier in the process. So these are all toward being more transparent and perhaps, lowering some of the commissions, which could improve housing affordability.
Jones: Last year, Mecklenburg County rolled out E-courts, the new online public records system. This has raised some privacy concerns regarding divorce filings, which understandably contain sensitive details. What're the concerns and what solution are couples turning to that offer more privacy?
Mecia: Yes. About a year ago, Mecklenburg courts have started moving all of their filings online. It used to be, you had to go to the courthouse and look those up. And I can tell you, as a reporter, someone who has gone down to the courthouse and looked at things like divorce filings, there are some sensitive things in those filings, you know, accusations of adultery, financial details — these things are now widely accessible to people. And so talking to divorce lawyers locally, they're saying that what they're seeing is some of their clients wanting to not have those details so easily available. So they're really doing something now that is called collaborative divorce, in which both sides in a divorce case will get together, you know, share a lot of those sensitive details outside of the court system, outside of court filings and reach an agreement that is then entered into the court, that doesn't have so many of those sensitive types of issues.
Jones: Now, let’s turn NASCAR's Hendrick Motorsports. Now they are suing Hooters, and I take it’s not for skimping out on wings?
Mecia: No, nothing to do with the food at Hooters. Hooters is falling on some hard times. The restaurant chain closed several dozen of its restaurants, including its location in uptown Charlotte. That was a couple of months ago. Now, Hendrick Motorsports is suing Hooters, saying that Hooters reneged on paying for its sponsorship agreement for one of its race car drivers. They say that they're owed $1.7 million and Hooters just hasn't paid that money.
Jones: Lastly, it’s back-to-school time and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ families are learning of new rules for certain supplies.
Mecia: Yeah, CMS this year is telling parents: Don't buy metal 3-ring binders for your children at school. They say that when students enter the schools, that they set off metal detectors with these 3-ring binders and so they would prefer not to have all those false alarms. Instead, they're suggesting spiral notebooks, plastic binders, pocket folders.
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