The cost of hiring a real estate agent to buy or sell a home may soon change, along with decades-old rules that have helped determine broker commissions.
The policy changes could help spur price competition for agents’ services and lower the cost for sellers who now typically cover the commission for the buyer’s agent, as well as that of their own.
In turn, more homebuyers could face pressure to pay for their agent’s commission out of pocket. That could be a challenge, especially for buyers already stretching financially to make a down payment and cover other upfront costs involved in buying a home.
Still, housing market watchers say it can’t be immediately determined how significantly any changes that potentially shift the cost of hiring an agent to a homebuyer will affect home sales. An adjustment period is likely as buyers, sellers and agents figure out how to navigate what comes next.
“I just think it’s too soon to tell,” said Greg Kling, an associate professor at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business who has taught and written about real estate taxation. “We’re going to either see prices are going up for buyers, or the market is going to correct itself.”
WHAT’S DRIVING THIS?
As part of a settlement announced Friday, the National Association of Realtors agreed to make some policy changes in order to resolve multiple class-action lawsuits brought on behalf of home sellers across the U.S.
The trade group agreed to change its rules so that brokers who list a home for sale on any of the databases affiliated with the NAR are no longer allowed to include offers of compensation for a buyer’s agent.
This change is meant to address a central assertion in lawsuits brought against the NAR and several major real estate brokerages: that homeowners are being forced to pay artificially inflated agent commissions when they sell their home.
The trade group also agreed to require agents, or others working with a homebuyer, to enter into a written agreement with them. That is meant to ensure homebuyers know going in what their agent will charge them for their services.
If the court signs off on the settlement, the NAR would implement the rule changes in mid-July. Meanwhile, several real estate brokerage operators, including Anywhere Real Estate and Keller Williams, have reached separate settlement agreements that include provisions for more transparency about agent commissions for homebuyers and sellers.
“The residential real estate marketplace will take some time, perhaps several years, to fully process the implications of this settlement,” said Stephen Brobeck, senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America. “But over time more, agents will feel free to offer different types of compensation and more consumers will comparison shop and negotiate commissions in a more transparent marketplace.”
WHAT THIS COULD MEAN FOR HOMEBUYERS
The key potential change centers on who foots the bill for real estate agents who represent homebuyers.
Currently, an agent or broker representing a home seller typically splits a commission — often around 5% to 6% of the home’s sale price — with the agent working on behalf of the homebuyer. Such an arrangement is known in the industry as “cooperative compensation.”
Under the proposed NAR settlement, a broker who represents a seller would no longer be allowed to include a blanket offer of cooperative compensation to a prospective buyer’s agent when they advertise the property on NAR-affiliated Multiple Listings Services, where a majority of U.S. homes are listed for sale. This is meant to remove any incentive from a buyer’s agent to steer their client away from home listings that don’t include a cooperative compensation offer.
However, the proposed rule change leaves it open for individual home sellers to negotiate such an arrangement with a buyer’s agent outside of the MLS platforms, essentially creating a loophole for agents to keep things as they are now.
Homebuyers could also ask the home seller for a concession that includes money to help cover the buyer’s agent compensation.
What happens if a seller doesn’t want to offer to pay the buyer’s agent commission? Homebuyers would be on the hook to shop around for an agent they can afford. They’d also have to sign a contract with an agent before they enlist their services, spelling out how much the agent’s compensation will be.
Having to factor in another expense into their homebuying budget could be challenging for homebuyers without a lot of savings or financial flexibility, making it tougher for them to navigate the housing market.
Still, many variables are at play when it comes to buying or selling a home, not the least of which is how motivated each party is to close the deal.
“If I’m a buyer and I know this seller is not going to reimburse my agent, then I may make a lower offer,” said Kling. “Now, obviously in a hot market, that strategy’s not going to work. But then in a hot market, I would have paid over listing price anyway.”
HOW MIGHT THIS AFFECT HOME SELLERS?
The biggest change for homeowners looking to sell is they could push back against paying for buyer-agent commissions, which could translate into considerable savings.
Consider a seller who agrees to pay a 3% commission for their listing agent — instead of potentially twice that to cover the buyer’s agent, too — and sells their home for February’s national median sale price of $379,100. That homeowner would save roughly $11,373 paying only their agent’s commission.
“The settlement will also encourage more sellers to negotiate the compensation of their listing agents,” said Brobeck.
Still, sellers may still face some pressure to cover buyer-agent commissions.
The NAR built in an exception to its proposed rule change that would allow a buyer’s agent to see offers of cooperative compensation on home listings being advertised by their own brokerage.
That workaround could tempt buyer agents to “steer” clients away from any listings that don’t come with an upfront compensation offer, which could prompt sellers to offer more competitive commissions to be split between their agent and the buyer’s, analysts with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods wrote in a research note Monday.
“So long as steering incentives still exist, home sellers may be compelled to offer supracompetitive commissions to buyer agents in order to avoid steering,” the analysts wrote.
HOW MIGHT THIS CHANGE THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY?
One concern is that by making it easier for sellers to opt out of making a cooperative compensation offer to buyer agents, some buyers will opt against hiring an agent or only doing so toward the end of the process after they’ve gone through most of the home hunt themselves. That could end up weeding out some “lower-performing brokers,” Kling said.
Another scenario is that alternative types of real estate business models will become more popular. This includes using discount brokers that will list a home for a flat fee of $500.
“They don’t offer any compensation to the buyer agent because the buyer agent negotiates their own conditions if they want more,” said Mike Downer, a broker associate with Coldwell Banker Realty in Naples, Florida. “That business model has been around for a long time.”
SEATTLE — A property the size of a city block is on the market, at a price lower than many homes for sale.
If you’re wondering why, well, the property is a cemetery in north Seattle.
Crown Hill Cemetery has been in the north Seattle neighborhood for more than 100 years. And even though the owners are being forced to sell the property, the sellers are adamant this property will remain a cemetery.
The property spans nearly 10 acres. Redfin posted the parcel last Thursday costing nearly $1.5 million. King County Superior Court documents filed in 2021 revealed the owners of the cemetery had to give up the piece of land as collateral after they couldn’t pay a loan to lenders that took them to court.
“I liked to think that I’ve seen everything in my line of work in my 25 years I’ve been doing this,” Sid Constantinescu said. “It’s very rare for me to see something like this being pledged.”
Constantinescu works for a distressed asset management firm called Pacific Crest Realty Advisors. The court appointed him to be the cemetery’s receiver, tasked to find a buyer who is a state-licensed cemetery owner.
“There’s no way that anything is going to happen to those bodies by virtue of this sale at any price,” Constantinescu said. “Everybody’s gravesites are safe, and this is all above board. It will be subject to a court approval process.”
And a process that will be assisted by an experienced realtor.
“I’ve never sold a cemetery before, I’ve been selling real estate for 39 years,” said Michael Peters, a real estate broker.
Constantinescu recruited Peters to sell the property. He said there’s been at least three interested buyers already.
“People phoning have been mostly interested,” Peters said. “I got a call on Friday that a lady has family here and she’s considering by it.”
Until a final sale happens. These sellers want the community to know the cemetery is in good spirits.
“Nobody needs to worry about bodies being exhumed,” Constantinescu said. “Or condos going on top of bodies. Period, full stop.”
Constantinescu hopes to sell the property within the next 90 days.
The Wine Source in Hampden is up for sale.
The Wine Source, a mainstay for over 20 years near The Avenue, a hot retail district in Baltimore’s Hampden neighborhood, has hit the market.
Owner David Wells, 70, has decided to retire and hired MacKenzie Commercial Real Estate Services LLC to handle the sale of both the business and the 9,640 SF property at 3601 Elm Ave.
Wells purchased the beer, wine and packaged goods store in 1990 when it was located in The Rotunda and subsequently moved the store to 3601 Elm Ave. in 2001.
“I was 34 years old when I bought the business, and now is the right time to find a younger version of myself that is passionate about taking The Wine Source to the next generation of customers and capitalizing on the brand we have carefully and enthusiastically created,” Wells said in a statement.
Wells Enterprises LLC purchased the now 40-year-old building and parking lot for $260K in February 2001, according to property records. State tax assessors estimated the property was worth more than $644K in July 2023.
MacKenzie’s Henry Deford, John Harrington and Tim Harrington are handling the sale of the free-standing retail property and adjacent parking lot. MacKenzie has experience bringing new retail to The Avenue, including Catalog Coffee, Kandahar Afghan Kitchen and The Urban Oyster.
“This represents a rare opportunity to acquire a turnkey and well-established operation and initiate a new chapter in the history of this legacy brand, as well as acquire strategic real estate,” Deford said in a statement.
The ownership of Uptown Tower has filed a motion to sell the troubled property at 4144 North Central Expressway in Dallas.
The Houston-based investor that owns the office building, Whitestone Uptown Tower LLC, entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Dec. 1 as it was in the process of being foreclosed upon. Lenders targeted December for the building’s foreclosure after the ownership defaulted on mortgage payments.
The motion for sale from the ownership followed a motion from creditor RSS MSBAM2013-C13-TX WUT, LLC seeking to compel Whitestone Uptown Tower to file a sale motion and amend plan, among other actions.
Whitestone Uptown Tower seeks to move the 253,561-square-foot property with a 363 sale, a U.S. Bankruptcy Code process allowing potential buyers to assume assets free and clear of liens and other claims.
The ownership is asking for approval of a proposed bidding process, with initial bids due by 5 p.m. on May 17. Qualifying bids would be determined on May 22. If necessary, an auction would take place on June 4. A closing deadline of July 31 is suggested.
The lender suggested $26 million be considered as the stalking horse bid for the process. The sum is also used as the minimum bid in the ownership’s proposed bidding procedures, which the ownership said indicates there is at least $8 million of equity in the property.
Dallas County lists the 1982-built Uptown Tower’s market value at more than $27.6 million. The ownership’s motion to sell states that its primary lender has filed a proof of claim with loan obligations of about $18.8 million after credit for escrow and suspense funds.
An emergency motion filed March 14 by the ownership to use collateral cash to keep up the tower’s regular operations said the building has a good occupancy rate of approximately 80% and “has begun to recover.” The Chapter 11 filing will enable the Whitestone to reorganize its debt to better match its projected cash flow, the emergency motion said.
It’s a hot real estate market these days and one southern Alberta business is trying a unique method to stand out from the rest – for the second time.
On Jan. 15, Cardston’s Cobblestone Manor launched a new effort to entice a buyer for the 102-year-old business by offering it to anyone who has $500 and a well-written essay.
“Contestants can win the Cobblestone Manor by writing a letter of 300 words or less about their vision for the future of the property,” officials said in a news release this week.
The contest closes on July 15, but they could extend that deadline if the 3,000-letter target isn’t met.
Simple math suggests that if the required number of letters are received, the owners could gather $1.5 million through the campaign.
The Cobblestone Manor’s current owners, Ivan and Marsha Negrych, have operated it as a bed and breakfast for the past 20 years.
In 2019, they also hoped to find a buyer with the same idea, but entries were $100.
At that time, they were looking for 17,000 essays, which would mean $1.7 million for the Negrychs.
But the couple told CTV News during the first campaign that it wasn’t about the money – it was to see the business given to someone who could “continue its legacy.”
CTV News has reached out to the campaign for details about what happened with the original contest and how many submissions have been received so far for the current one.
The owners have not responded with any of that information.
Alberta Liquor, Gaming and Cannabis (AGLC) said it was not aware of the contest, in an emailed statement Monday.
“However, we are now looking into if we have any role in this matter. As the investigation is ongoing, I can’t comment further,” an AGLC spokesperson said in the email.
Anyone interested in entering the new campaign can seek more information by emailing winthecobblestone@gmail.com.
LANSDALE — It sounds like the plot of a movie: a deep dive into archives, unearthing hundreds of parcels, largely unused for decades, in the heart of a rapidly growing school district that all but forgot about them.
But it’s no movie: North Penn’s school board has started talks on selling their “movie lots,” a batch of properties in Hatfield they’ll need to decide what to do with.
“We’re going to have discussions about what that process would look like, if we were going to sell that property,” said Superintendent Todd Bauer.
Plot thickens
In recent years, district staff and the board have hinted at talks about the movie lots, a group of parcels accumulated by the district over the years, most recently in spring 2022 after the district obtained the former WNPV Radio property adjacent to North Penn High School in Towamencin in summer 2020.
During the board’s March 12 finance committee meeting, Bauer and district CFO Steve Skrocki took to the big screen — a projector and poster in the board’s meeting room, not a movie screen — to summarize what they’ve found in district archives about those lots, and what they’d like the board to do next.
“North Penn School District owns a significant property, kinda in the neighborhood of Welsh and Forty Foot Road,” Bauer said, as Skrocki showed an aerial photo of the area. The properties are zoned residential, total about 56 acres, and the district has been approached roughly “half a dozen times over the years” about whether they’d be interested in selling.
“We explored the option of moving our transportation center there, but it is not zoned properly for that, and quite frankly the infrastructure does not exist to have buses coming in and out of there,” Bauer said, for moving the district’s bus garage, dispatch center, propane fuel station and parking for roughly 100 school buses there. The total size is “more appropriate for an elementary school, it’s not a high school or middle school” that would need large athletic fields and parking, the superintendent said, prompting a wry question from finance committee chairman Christian Fusco.
“So, no second high school there?” Fusco said, and Bauer answered “No.”
Limited need
District enrollment projections don’t indicate any large population increase that would call for another elementary school, the superintendent told the board, before handing off to Skrocki to summarize what he’s learned so far, and next steps the board could take. On the northeast corner of the intersection of Welsh and Forty Foot, Skrocki said, just north of a shopping center on that corner, construction is currently underway for developer Pulte Group’s “Del Webb North Penn” development that Hatfield Township officials approved in 2019-20.
Just east of that 55-and-over community is a separate batch of movie lots that is “either owned directly, or the equitable owners are Pulte Homes as well,” Skrocki said. Hatfield Township staff said this week that the Del Webb project is roughly 50 percent complete, and Pulte has submitted a conditional use application proposing to build single-family homes on roughly 42 acres adjacent to the project now under construction
Just south of that parcel, between a cul-de-sac development off of Vernon Court, west of Orvilla north of Welsh, sit the district’s movie lots, visible on aerial photos as a cleared plot shaped roughly like a shield, below a rectangular cleared plot that’s the site of the Pulte plans.
“This is tillable soil here. We actually lease this to a farmer: we have an annual lease, for a small amount of money,” roughly $2,500 per year, Skrocki said.
Land gimmick
Where did the term “Movie lots” come from? Based on district research and MediaNews Group archives, the properties were small parcels, often in strips roughly 100 feet by 20 feet, given away by movie theaters as far back as the 1920s, as prizes for those attending movies.
“The way the movie companies were spinning it was, ‘We’re giving away these parcels, and you can develop it as your country retreat, to build a cabin on it,’” Skrocki said.
“There’s a couple of problems with that: there were no streets that were ever developed, there were no survey markers, so people didn’t really know exactly where their property actually was, and quite frankly they were too small to build anything on them. So at the end of the day, they really weren’t worth anything, it was a marketing ploy,” he said. “A 20-by-100 parcel doesn’t get you very much to build on, not even a small, cozy country retreat.”
As he presented to the board, the CFO showed an enlarged map of the lots, with dozens of small parcel lines crisscrossed by paper streets that exist only on plans, and small carve-outs where lots are owned by either Hatfield Township or private holders. District searches have found maps from the early 2000s showing seven properties owned privately, six by Hatfield Township, and 133 contiguous parcels owned by the district, largely obtained through tax or sheriff sales over the years, for a total acquisition price of just under $80,000.
“Individuals that were holding onto these useless properties, I think when they realized they weren’t worth anything, and they couldn’t develop it — they stopped paying taxes on it. Because they were subject to real estate taxes, they figured the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, I’m not going to pay real estate taxes on it,” Skrocki said.
District records also show donations and a major trade in 1993 of roughly 180 parcels, exchanging some of the land next to the current Pulte development that the builder is eyeing now, and those the district now owns, with a goal in mind.
“It was clear, in the documents I was able to find, that the intent of the school district and the school board at that time was to try to get as many contiguous properties, movie lots, as possible. It made sense: one movie lot is worth nothing, 50 or 100 or 150 combined together, in pretty contiguous area, could mean a development,” he said.
Why? “That effort was really for consideration of putting a school there. I couldn’t find out if it was going to be an elementary, a middle school, it’s not large enough for a high school. At some point, circa 1996, it appears that idea was abandoned. I don’t know why,” Skrocki said.
That land is currently zoned residential, similar to the residential zoning Towamencin Township changed in February for the campus of North Penn High School to change setback and runoff requirements as they discuss renovating and reconfiguring that property. Out of the 56 acres, roughly 38 acres are leased to the farmer, in a contract approved annually.
Why sell now?
Skrocki said the district has looked at roughly 30 sites for a potential transportation move, and ruled out the movie lots because of the underlying zoning, and the challenges of adding infrastructure, enhancing access to Welsh and Orvilla, and securing the zoning change. The state’s school code allows several ways for a district to sell land: after public discussions, a sale can be done by auction, by sealed bids, or by private sale, and Skrocki said the latter is their recommendation.
“We think the potential to maximize the benefit for the school district, is through a private sale, negotiating with one or more developers,” he said.
Steps before doing so would include a finding that the property is unused and unnecessary, which Skrocki said the district can now deciare: “Right now, there’s no plans for the land,” with no long-term need for another school and a decision not to use it for the transportation center becoming clear. The district would then need to formally notify Hatfield Township and the Montgomery County Planning Commission that they intend to sell, then negotiate an agreement of sale, and obtain two appraisal reports or affidavits of value.
If the board approves the sale agreement, the district would then file that petition with the county’s Court of Common Pleas, and a judge would conduct a hearing on the sale. During that hearing, two persons could provide an affidavit or opinion of value, or the district could present written reports: “We feel the report just has more credibility,” Skrocki said, and would provide a data point for whether the district should sell.
“Quite frankly, if we’re not able to generate interest for a sales price that is at or above the appraisal, we’re not going to make a recommendation to you to sell the property. It’s that simple. It needs to be at, or higher than, the appraisal amount,” Skrocki said.
State codes require that the proceeds from that sale must be used for debt service or capital expenditures, “and this is perfect timing,” Skrocki said: with the $200-million-plus high school renovations now being planned, and talks underway on a new site for the transportation center, those proceeds could go toward either.
District files also indicated that in 2006, a concept plan considered developing the movie lot site for an alternative school, a maintenance department, a warehouse, and a bus maintenance building, none of which happened: in 2008, the district acquired and moved into a warehouse on Eighth Street in Lansdale for support service offices, and converted an industrial building on North Penn Road in Hatfield into the Northbridge School.
“So, those plans for site development were abandoned in 2006, and the district went with acquisition instead. From what I can derive from the archives, since 2006 it’s just been shelved. Nearly 20 years, nothing has really happened with those movie lots,” he said.
Residential development could raise concerns about traffic, access, runoff and other issues, and any such developer would need to go through land development approvals with the township and its consultants if the district does sell, he said. The immediate request from staff is for the board to direct administration “to take all the steps necessary to pursue the sale,” including speaking with developers and seeking appraisals.
Bauer added that in addition to the high school renovations and transportation move, the district also maintains a long-term capital list of smaller infrastructure upgrades needed across all buildings, which is discussed monthly by the board’s facilities and operations committee and is currently over $190 million in needs.
“We just really believe it’s the responsible and prudent thing to explore this, and come back to the board with a value of this, and what we might be able to get,” he said.
“We do not anticipate using that property. We were holding out hope that it may be for transportation, but that’s just not in the cards,” Bauer said.
Board member Tim MacBain said his family lives on a similar movie lot, and thought “it would be foolish if we didn’t understand what the property was worth.” Fusco added that he heard a frequent concern ahead of the high school funding referendum in January that the district should look to find other sources of revenue.
“If we can find some revenue here, to put toward those capital projects, that it is a good and prudent use of your time, energy and district resources,” he said.
In 2022 the board held brief talks on properties they own across the district, and referenced the WNPV site, the movie lots, and a parcel adjacent to Montgomery Elementary School; that land was donated roughly ten years ago, and “can’t be used for much” and would likely have little market value, Skrocki said.
The finance committee voted unanimously to direct staff to begin the process, and a motion to do so could be on the full board’s agenda when they meet on March 21. North Penn’s school board next meets at 7 p.m. on March 21 at the district Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock Street; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.
A vacant former Sears at Portland’s Lloyd Center mall is up for sale following a bankruptcy filing.
An affiliate of Cypress Equities, the Texas company that owned the mall until late 2021 and still owns the Sears store, hired a real estate company to sell the nearly 143,000 square-foot property. The affiliate filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December with more than $10 million in liabilities, court documents show.
Hilco Real Estate, the firm hired to sell the four-story anchor store on the eastern side of the mall at 1260 N.E. Lloyd Center is soliciting bids for an April 17 deadline. Bidders must prequalify in order to participate in an online auction on April 24.
Jamie Coté, vice president of real estate at Hilco, said there’s no starting bid price for the property. It also comes with rights to an adjacent parking lot with space for 275 cars.
The Lloyd Center is slated to undergo a major transformation over the next 10 years. Urban Renaissance Group, the Seattle-based developer that co-owns the rest of the mall with New York lender KKR Real Estate Finance Trust, announced plans in September to transform the mall into a mixed-use neighborhood with retail shops, restaurants, housing and entertainment.
That’s likely to include the Sears site, even if it winds up with a different owner than the rest of the mall.
“It’s a great place, and it’s part of that whole block that’s being redeveloped,” Coté said. “It’ll be exciting what comes of the Lloyd Center in the coming years.”
Coté said the use agreement for the Sears store would provide the new owner certain rights to what happens to the store and adjacent parking lot during the development process. By taking advantage of the use agreement, he said, the buyer would get a say in the future of the project.
“It’s a good opportunity for a buyer to acquire something and be a part of the redevelopment of the Lloyd Center,” Coté said.
The former Sears store was built in 1959. According to property records, Sears Roebuck & Co. bought the space in 1999. CAPREF Lloyd Center East LLC then bought it from Sears in 2016 as part of its plan to revamp the entire mall.
During the mid-2010s, CAPREF’s parent company, Cypress, spent tens of millions to refresh the mall’s interior with a smaller ice skating rink, new staircases, among other things.
But despite the extensive renovations, the Lloyd Center became a quieter place. Like many malls in the county, it saw a decline in shopper traffic and an exodus of major retailers as consumer preferences shifted to online shopping. Nordstrom closed its store in 2015, followed by Sears and Marshalls in 2018. The mall’s last large department store, Macy’s, closed in January 2021.
The extended closures during the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened the mall’s problems. KKR Real Estate Finance Trust, the New York-based lender that helped finance the mall back in 2015, foreclosed in 2021 after Cypress defaulted on a $177 million loan.
KKR and a new partner, Seattle-based developer Urban Renaissance Group, unveiled ambitious plans last fall to transform the 29.3-acre Lloyd Center property into a “mixed-use neighborhood” that includes housing, shopping, restaurants — and an ice rink.
CAPREF, meanwhile, stopped paying a lender, Keystone National Group of Salt Lake City, on a $7,526,520 loan it took out in 2017. County records also indicate that CAPREF hasn’t paid property taxes on the parcel since 2019. Keystone sued CAPREF in 2022 for nonpayment on the loan, court records show.
It did not foreclose, according to court records, because the property was tied up in the bankruptcy proceedings of Regal Entertainment Group, which had sued CAPREF in 2015 over parking lot access at the Regal Cinema off Northeast Multnomah Street. According to court records, CAPREF agreed to build Regal a new theater at the east end of the mall by October 2020, or else pay $10 million, as part of the settlement. Since the theater was never built and Regal has since gone bankrupt, creditors are hoping to get money from CAPREF.
Coté, the Hilco broker, said the buyer would receive a title clear of liens and encumbrances on the Sears property.
Urban Renaissance Group declined to comment on whether they or KKR plan to bid on the former Sears parcel.
—Kristine de Leon covers retail and business trends. Reach her at kdeleon@oregonian.com.
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Back in the 2010s, Mark Cross was able to jump from job to job fairly easily.
A technical business analyst, Mr Cross worked as a contractor for financial services and telecommunications firms. Most of his contracts ranged from a few months to a year, as he was often brought in to solve specific issues that companies were facing or to fill gaps in a firm’s resources.
“It was all relatively straightforward. I was working every day, finishing a job on the Friday and going straight into the next contract on the Monday,” said Mr Cross, 47, from London.
“I had absolutely no trouble finding work. There would be pages of suitable contracts appearing on LinkedIn or other sites, and I could easily find five to 10 contracts that I could apply to on any given week.”
Fast forward to 2019, and everything changed. The government announced that it would be expanding IR35 rules into the private sector, which would move the onus of who was responsible for determining someone’s employment and tax status from the worker to the company.
IR35, also known as the off-payroll working rules, was introduced in 2000 as an anti tax avoidance rule. It applies to freelancers and contractors, and HMRC uses it to distinguish between genuine contractors and those who are effectively employees but are paid as a contractor.
A contractor often pays less tax than employees and the employer does not have to pay holiday or sick pay or national insurance contributions, so the taxman was concerned that it was losing out on tax revenue.
While the rules were scheduled to be introduced in 2020 and were later postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic, the plan to bring in the changes transformed the job market for contractors like Mr Cross.
“The number of jobs available just plummeted by about 85 per cent overnight,” he said. “It went from me being selective for which jobs I would apply for to more like just one contract a week that I was eligible for, and then there was a lot of competition for those roles.”
After 25 years of consistent work in his field, Mr Cross found himself casting an increasingly wide net to try to find a contract.
Eventually, he found a job working for a company in Lithuania that ran for 15 months. But due to the changing circumstances of Brexit and the IR35 rules, he had to renegotiate his contract four times within the first three months. In the end, the problem was only resolved when he incorporated a new business in Estonia.
When the pandemic hit, Mr Cross returned to the UK to find a dearth of suitable roles.
He said: “There was nothing I could apply for — 2021 was my first year of hell. I had two contracts that year and for the first time in my career, they both fell apart in the first couple of months.
“Most of the companies that were allowing outside-IR35 roles were tiny, inexperienced organisations without a good recruitment process.”
Campaigners say that the change to the IR35 rules meant that companies, fearful of making an incorrect IR35 judgement and facing a fine from the taxman, decided to go “blanket inside-IR35” — effectively, to decide that all contractors would pay taxes as if they were employees.
For those genuinely working as contractors, this caused a problem: outside-IR35 work dried up, while inside-IR35 work was often unsuitable.
“I’ve recently been working a contract in London, so have been going down there for the last six months. This costs me £600 a week on train fares, hotels and subsistence,” said Mr Cross. “But then, I’m put inside-IR35 for tax purposes. It means that I’m then paying income tax and national insurance, on top of VAT. I’m almost paying out of my own pocket to do the work.”
According to Seb Maley, chief executive of the IR35 specialist Qdos, being put inside IR35 for tax purposes can mean that those who are genuinely self-employed can take home up to 30 per cent less after tax.
Mr Maley added that while contractors were businesses in their own right, they were typically one-person companies, so tax-legislation had a very real and personal impact on these individuals.
For Mr Cross, becoming an employee isn’t a valid option. He said: “I’m an autistic professional, and had considerable difficulties early on in my career with employment.
“Mostly, I’m a contractor because I’m damn good at my job and being self-employed allows me to give myself the reasonable adjustments I need to perform at my optimum level — I know the equipment I need, I can choose which organisations I would work.”
The situation left Mr Cross in a difficult spot. With his earning potential reduced by about 25 per cent and a lack of job opportunities, he took on a significant amount of debt.
To keep his business afloat, Mr Cross has worked for the past nine months to completely transform it. He raised his qualifications to become highly trained in cybersecurity, and has been building a platform by speaking at conferences and running training programmes.
But he needed to fund this somehow, so has been forced to sell his property.
“When I started work, I used some of my profits to buy a house as a buy-to-let. It was supposed to be my pension. But I’ve had to instruct agencies to sell it. My business just won’t be able to survive otherwise,” said Mr Cross.
Going forward, Mr Cross is moderately optimistic — but only because he has spent money and worked to morph his business into one that can survive in a post-IR35 world. He said that if he hadn’t made the changes, it is unlikely his business would have survived.
“Right now, the sector is fundamentally broken. I’m clinging on by my fingernails. At the moment, I’m doing everything I can to make myself a niche and get as much work as I can,” he said. “I don’t expect many people will cry over the contractors, but what makes me upset is that I pride myself in doing a job well. But if my clients are reluctant to hire me, then it’s game over.”
Photo: Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images
On early Sunday afternoon, local police began shutting down the streets around Keter Torah synagogue in Teaneck, a normally quiet suburb in New Jersey. A wall of cops assembled on the street in front of the building, dividing two angry throngs: on one side demonstrators with Israeli flags, and on the other demonstrators with Palestinian flags. The groups hurled increasingly familiar insults at one another ranging from “asshole” to “baby killer.” Inside, approximately 400 prospective buyers were attending a real-estate convention called the Great Israeli Real Estate Event.
The Great Israeli Real Estate Event is an annual exhibition produced by Gideon Katz, a self-described “expert in marketing Israeli real estate to the global Jewish community.” Its aim is to help American and Canadian buyers answer questions about buying property in Israel, and to showcase available properties. This year, the event had planned stops in synagogues in Montreal and Toronto before Teaneck; then it would be onto Lawrence and eventually, on March 13, Flatbush. Initially, he’d considered canceling because of the war. But ultimately, he decided to lean in instead. This was actually an ideal time for Americans to invest in Israeli properties, Katz said on local Israeli news channels, due to rising fears of antisemitism, along with the fact that real-estate experts predict that land value in Israel will increase once the war is over. “In a world where uncertainty looms and anti-Semitism shows its face more boldly than ever, the decision to invest in a home in Israel is not just wise,” he wrote in an advertisement for the event. “It’s exhilarating!
At most of the events was a company called My Home in Israel, brought along to showcase available properties in both Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies: multiple units in a building near Givat HaMatos in East Jerusalem, townhouses in near Ari’el University in the heart of the West Bank, and a five-bedroom villa with a pool in the luxury enclave of Efrat south of Bethlehem. The latter apparently “transcends mere housing; it embodies architectural brilliance. Conceived by the esteemed architects at Shahar Ben Hamo, this project graces the slopes of Fig Hill, promising a setting of unrivaled serenity.”
From the first stop, in Montreal, protesters have shown up to condemn the sale of houses built on settlements illegally expropriated from Palestinians in the West Bank. In Toronto, a man attacked pro-Palestinian protesters with a nail gun. Things escalated ahead of Teaneck, when a video of a Jewish resident named Rich Siegel denouncing the event went viral. “There’s a genocide going on,” he said in the video. “What this real-estate event is going to do is fan the flames.” The Teaneck protests were especially large, drawing both locals and out-of-towners.
The event began getting so much attention that an unrelated company, with an extremely similar name, got caught up in the fracas. Home in Israel, a Netanya-based company that works in partnership with Keller Williams, has also been touring through Canada, New Jersey, and New York over the past month. Because of their names, people began conflating the two. After the Teaneck event, Home in Israel attempted to publicly distinguish itself from My Home in Israel. A representative from Home in Israel told the Times that they have no properties in the settlements, though some of their listings are in neighborhoods available exclusively to Jews (unlike the U.S., restrictive covenants are legal in Israel). And in response to the imbroglio in Toronto earlier this month, Keller Williams also clarified that it is not affiliated with My Home in Israel and advised agents to “stay away” from further events that might draw protests. (Adding to the confusion: There is also a third company, called My Israel Home, which has also recently been on a North American tour. Its available properties are largely in the Jerusalem area on the Israeli side of the 1949 armistice line, though its website shows one property sold in the West Bank settlement of Ganei Modiin.)
The Great Israeli Real Estate Event ultimately decided to cancel its final stop, which was supposed to be held at Flatbush’s Khal Bnei Avrohom Yaakov synagogue. “At the recommendation of the NYPD, an Israel real estate sales event that was scheduled to take place at the Shul on Avenue N and East 27th Street tomorrow will not take place at this location,” the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition wrote in a notice to its community. “The Rabbonim are asking all those who were planning to counter-protest to please not attend.” But according to the WhatsApp channel “Flatbush Scoop,” the event actually did go forward — it was just moved to Zoom. “Israel real estate event in Flatbush with planned protest MOVED TO DIGITAL LIVESTREAM,” read one message in the chat. “Recording will be available afterwards. Everything you need to know about buying in Israel!”
Newly released data for December shows that potential buyers and sellers in Crawford County saw houses sell for lower than the previous month’s median sale price of $140,000.
The median home sold for $113,000, an analysis of data from Realtor.com shows. That means December, the most recent month for which figures are available, was down 19.3% from November.
Compared to December 2022, the median home sale price was up 15.3% at $113,000 compared to $98,000.
Realtor.com sources sales data from real estate deeds, resulting in a few months’ delay in up-to-date data. The statistics don’t include homes currently listed for sale, and aren’t directly comparable to listings data.
Information on your local housing market, along with other useful community data, is available at data.bucyrustelegraphforum.com.
Looking only at single-family homes, the $107,000 median selling price in Crawford County was down 23.6% in December from $140,000 the month prior. Since December 2022, the sale price of single-family homes was up 12% from a median of $95,500.
One single family home sold for $1 million or more during the month, compared to zero recorded transactions of at least $1 million in December 2022.
In December, the number of recorded sales in Crawford County dropped by 28.9% since December 2022 from 52 to 37. All residential home sales totaled to $6.5 million.
In Ohio, homes sold at a median of $199,921 during December, down 0.5% from $200,913 in November. There were 10,462 recorded sales across the state during December, down 7.7% from 11,329 recorded sales in December 2022.
The total value of recorded residential home sales in Ohio increased by 46.2% from $3.1 billion in November to $4.6 billion this December.
Out of all residential home sales in Ohio, 2.87% of homes sold for at least $1 million in December, up from 1.65% in December 2022.
Sales prices of single-family homes across Ohio decreased by 1.7% from a median of $200,000 in November to $196,700 in December. Since December 2022, the sale price of single-family homes across the state was up 6.9% from $183,948.
Across the state, the sale price of condominiums and townhomes dropped 2.3% from a median of $215,000 in November to $210,000 during December. The median sale price of condominiums and townhomes is up 6.3% from the median of $197,625 in December 2022.
The median home sale price used in this report represents the midway point of all the houses or units listed over the given period of time. The median offers a more accurate view of what’s happening in a market than the average sale price, which would mean taking the sum of all sale prices then dividing by the number of homes sold. The average can be skewed by one particularly low or high sale.
The USA TODAY Network is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from Realtor.com. Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here. This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu.