A 'For Sale' sign is posted on the lawn in front of a home on March 15, 2024, in Miami, Florida. The National Association of Realtors announced that it had reached a nationwide settlement of claims that the industry had conspired to keep agent commissions high. As part of the settlement, the National Association of Realtors did not admit wrongdoing but agreed to pay $418 million over the next four years.
Joe Raedle via Getty Images President Joe Biden knows high housing costs are a barrier to his bid for reelection. “The last I saw, the combination of the inflation, the cost of inflation, all those things, that’s really worrisome to people, with good reason,” he said in a May interview with CNN. “That’s why I’m working very hard to bring the cost of rentals down, to increase the number of homes that are available.
” On Thursday, a coalition of progressive groups sent Biden’s administration a gentle reminder about a powerful argument he can deploy to show he’s already begun to lower homebuying costs for millions of Americans. To boot, it comes at the expense of a politically powerful industry in a way that also summarizes his administration’s approach to the economy. Advertisement “President Joe Biden has recognized the need to rein in anticompetitive practices in the housing market as a cornerstone of the administration’s pro-competition agenda,” the progressive groups, led by Demand Progress, wrote in the Thursday letter to Attorney General Merrick G.