The sales tactics of the National Association of Realtors should be examined and potentially come under the same restrictions as securities brokers through the Securities and Exchange Commission. Realtors routinely lie about the investment potential of residential real estate. People believe these lies and enter into transactions that often harm them financially.
After the stock market crash which helped precipitate the Great Depression, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the sales activities of securities brokers. There are strict regulations in place governing the representations made concerning the future performance of investment opportunities. These protections were put in place to protect the general public from the false promises made by stockbrokers in the 1920s which many naive investors believed. The same analogy holds true for Realtors.
The National Association of Realtors has launched numerous advertising campaigns suggesting erroneously that residential real estate is a great investment and appreciation will make home buyers wealthy. The mantra of all realtors is that house prices always go up. There are currently no limits to the distortions and outright lies realtors can tell prospective buyers with regards to the investment potential of residential real estate.
Buyers are already prone to believe the fallacies of unlimited riches in real estate, and these fallacious beliefs lead to housing bubbles. Realtors should be prevented from making representations concerning the investment potential of real estate. Since the regulatory framework for this kind of regulation and oversight is already in place under the auspices of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Congress would merely need to make Realtors subject to these regulations in order to solve the problem.
Regulating the Realtors would go a long way toward preventing future housing bubbles. Such regulation is an important component of an overall reform package to prevent a recurrence of the Great Housing Bubble.
