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A new article by Don Layton, Senior Visiting Fellow at the NYU Furman Center, examines the unusual concentration of closing-related transactions – of which brokerage and title insurance are just two – where prices are unnecessarily high due to the suppression of normal price competition to determine its root cause. Surprisingly, the issue is not simply that price competition in closing-related products has been subverted, as this was historically common in many industries. Nor is it a lack of reform proposals to re-establish price competition. Rather, the root cause has been the long-running blocking of reforms to reinstate price competition in housing and mortgage markets, which contrasts with other industries where such reforms have instead been successfully implemented in past decades. This blocking has been enabled by extensive political advocacy and lobbying, especially aimed at elected members of Congress and state legislatures, and stands out for how effective it has been. Fortunately, there is evidence that the decades-long track record of such blocking being so effective may finally be coming to an end. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/erQtGe6h

The White House’s Focus on Closing Costs: Long Overdue and Worth the Fight (Part 2)

The White House’s Focus on Closing Costs: Long Overdue and Worth the Fight (Part 2)

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