TheStreet's J.D. Durkin brings the latest business headlines from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as markets open for trading Wednesday, November 1.
Full Video Transcript Below:
J.D. DURKIN: I'm J.D. Durkin - reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. Here's what we're watching on TheStreet today.
Wall Street is gearing up for the Fed's latest policy announcement. The central bank will release an interest rate decision at 2:00 PM ET, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell will take the stage at 2:30 PM ET as he fields questions from reporters in Washington.
The Fed has hinted that it may need to continue hiking rates to get inflation down to its targeted 2 percent.
Turning to real estate - if you sold a house between April 2015 and June 2022, and thought the commissions you had to pay the brokers seemed a little high, well - you may have been right.
A federal jury ordered the National Association of Realtors and several large brokerage firms to pay $1.8 billion in damages for conspiring to artificially inflate the commissions paid to real estate agents.
The verdict also caused real estate stocks like Zillow and Redfin to plummet. Under current NAR rules, sellers are required to pay commissions to the buyer's agent, and on sites like these, seller agents need to disclose the compensation being offered to the buying agent.
Now, that rule could drastically change, or even be wiped out entirely. And if selling agents don't have to disclose what the buying agent will be getting, there's no real incentive to give them anything at all - meaning they'd have to seek compensation directly from the buyer. This could lead to more buyers choosing to house hunt alone, rather than forking over an agent fee.
That'll do it for your daily briefing. From the New York Stock Exchange, I'm J.D. Durkin with TheStreet.
