In a win for online reduction real estate brokers, the Justice agency and the National organization of Realtors announced a settlement Tuesday that will let World Wide Web brokers use the same for-sale home listings used by traditional bricks-and-mortar brokers.

The Justice agency says the proposed antitrust settlement will create more competition among traditional and reduction brokers, while giving consumers more choices.

“Today’s settlement prevents traditional brokers from intentionally impeding competition,” says Deborah Garza, deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s antitrust division.

The settlement is encouraging to online real estate firms such as Redfin, a Seattle-based start-up that CEO Glenn Kelman calls “the E-Trade of real estate brokers.” Before the settlement, Kelman says he wasn’t even certain that Redfin would continue to exist. Now, though, there’s potential for growth for his firm and others, he predicts.

“We’re relieved — we’ve been thirsting for that notes for a decade,” Kelman says. “If that lawsuit had gone the wrong

way, we wouldn’t get the documents we need, and that documents is our lifeblood.”

The Justice branch filed a civil lawsuit in 2005 against the NAR, alleging that the trade group prevented online brokers from offering lower costs and better services to consumers.

Under NAR policies, online brokers could not gain access to home sale listings offered by the more than 800 NAR-affiliated “multiple listing services” around the country. Some consumers prefer online and reduction brokers, who may charge less than the 5 percent or 6 percent commission of traditional brokers.

In one undisclosed market, an online firm was forced to close its popular Web site after all of the traditional brokers followed a questionable NAR policy and withheld their house listings from the site, according to prosecutors.

The NAR does not confess or deny liability in the settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge in Chicago and would…

Orginal post by Top Tech News