NOW or THEN for VOWs

Geoff Lewis, a lawyer for RE/MAX International, tells Inman News that he believes the proposed agreement to settle the DOJ vs. NAR antitrust lawsuit won't mean much for the industry or consumers, as Internet Data Exchange (IDX) sites already enjoy widespread use by industry participants and don't require registration to access data as Virtual Office Web sites would under the terms of the proposed settlement (see Inman News article today).

Is it too late for VOWs? "The response to VOWs hasn't been great because consumers can find sites throughout the Internet on which to gather information without having to register their name and contact information," Mark Lesswing, NAR chief technology officer, stated in a NAR announcement about the proposed settlement. But some say they expect the settlement will encourage VOW innovations.

There's disagreement on whether the settlement agreement could potentially lead to lower costs for consumers, and on a number of other issues addressed in the settlement.

Some interesting points in the proposed new VOW policy that will result from this settlement: "An agreement entered into at any time between the (MLS) participant and registrant (at a VOW site) imposing a financial obligation on the registrant or creating representation of the registrant by the participant must be established separately from the terms of use, must be prominently labeled as such, and may not be accepted solely by a mouse click."

Does this language prevent a company from offering exclusively Internet-based real estate brokerage services to consumers? What if the consumer presses the "enter" key on the computer instead of the mouse? Or uses a trackball?

And there's this: "the registrant (at a VOW site) acknowledges entering into a lawful consumer-broker relationship with the participant." But what is "a lawful consumer-broker relationship," and could registration at a VOW site potentially be a trigger for procuring cause claims?

There is a lot of other language in the proposed settlement that industry professionals will be pouring over in the weeks ahead. We've created a discussion group at the "Community" section of the Inman News site.

Please visit the group site to share your thoughts about what this settlement might mean for the industry and for consumers.

Also, check out an Inman poll on the topic here.

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