At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.
A decade after producing a report analyzing threats to the real estate industry that would go on to be cited in a major antitrust commission lawsuit and trial, real estate consulting firm T3 Sixty is set for a sequel: “The Opportunity Report.”
The company plans to release the follow up to its “DANGER Report,” which it says will be comparable in research and structure to its predecessor, in early 2025. The report will draw on one-on-one interviews with industry leaders and study the opportunities available for the industry, after “technology and AI innovations, multiple new business models and industrywide class action compensation lawsuits,” T3 Sixty said in its announcement.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL INDEX SURVEY FOR JULY
The report’s aim is to support agents and brokers in this time of uncertainty, according to the company.
Stefan Swanepoel | Photo credit: T3 Sixty
“[T]he time is now for all facets of the real estate industry to transform itself, adopt innovative new technologies and substantially redesign the homeowner experience,” said Stefan Swanepoel, T360’s executive chairman and the report’s author, in a statement.
In May 2015, NAR released its “DANGER Report” detailing 50 threats, risks and challenges the real estate was facing at the time and would face in the near future.
NAR commissioned the 164-page report from Swanepoel, who conducted extensive research to put it together, including interviews with 70 notables inside and outside the industry and a survey that garnered nearly 8,000 responses.
Among the top 10 threats listed in the report was: “Commissions spiral downward: A variety of powerful forces exert significant downward pressure on real estate commissions.” The report stressed that the U.S. real estate market may be susceptible to a “gradual downward slide or a realignment of fees as charged in other countries in the world.”
Because of this, the DANGER Report was cited in a major commission case known as Sitzer | Burnett and Swanepoel himself was called to the stand at that case’s trial in October.
He acknowledged while under oath that the 2015 report was “art, not science,” and that the report included “hypothetical future events that may or may not occur” based on interviews with dozens of people in the industry.
The plaintiffs used the report to show the industry’s fear that commissions would go down. The report said there was a 100 percent chance of downward pressure on commissions, and it highlighted the typical commissions in other countries.
The report pointed out other countries where commissions are lower than they typically are in the U.S., including the United Kingdom, where they’re 1-2 percent, according to the report.
Swanepoel testified in court that he didn’t choose those countries to compare to the U.S., but rather to show “an eclectic compilation of countries.”
