Why Decoupling Commissions Failed To Lower Housing Costs
View Article Joe Ventrone’s April 17 opinion piece comments on decoupling real estate commissions based on a recent Consumer Federation of America/Urban League report, on past research by me as a former CFA senior fellow, and on my more recent research as a senior fellow at the Consumer Policy Center, among other consumer sources. The article suggests that settlement of […]
Agents Earn Too Little, Consumers Pay Too Much
Download Article Stephen Brobeck, Senior Fellow, Consumer Policy Center, responding to Cara Ameer’s 12/3/25 critique in Inman of the recent CPC report on post-settlement changes impacting home buyers I agree with much of what Cara Ameer said about the challenges facing agents in her response to our report on “the homebuyer experience.” How little […]
Trump’s War on the CPSC Is the Most Dangerous Yet
View Article If you think that President Trump’s legally dubious war on regulatory agencies like EEOC, NLRB, and FTC is outrageous, be prepared to recognize the tiny Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as the hands-down winner for most savaged regulatory agency in this administration. CPSC is the federal body whose sole mission is to […]
Private listings negatively impact both buyers and sellers: Watchdog
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With a focus on food, RFK Jr. can actually make America healthier
View Media Article How ironic. As a dyed-in-the-wool progressive who for decades led the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s campaign for healthier diets, I was disappointed when administration after administration failed to fight for effective policies. But now in comes anti-regulatory, pro-industry, junk-food-devouring President Donald J. Trump, who vows to let his […]
Consumers to Determine the Future of the Industry
Download Media Article The Sitzer-Moehrl lawsuit settlement and new NAR rules have created confusion, controversy, and conflict within both the residential real estate industry and among its critics. All this is not surprising because no-one is completely satisfied with the terms of the settlement and because the class action litigation ended up opening a […]
Electric Cars and Election Consequences
View Original Article America’s response to climate change has many moving parts. But how people travel from point A to point B in an environmentally sustainable manner stands atop the challenges of slowing the human alteration of our earth’s atmosphere. Indeed, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from transportation has moved more sluggishly than other […]
Reflections of an Unapologetic Safety Regulator
I have been a proud, unapologetic regulator. I say this after completing a career that spanned almost 50 years in the world of regulation, spent variously as a regulatory agency commissioner, a congressional staff attorney overseeing several regulatory agencies, and a professor researching and teaching the subject. Much of my experience comes from years of […]