Right to list agreement firm MV Realty is under fire yet again from another state’s attorney general. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein announced on Tuesday that he was suing MV Realty, claiming that the firm was violating North Carolina’s “laws prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices, usurious lending, abusive telephone solicitation practices, and unfair debt collection practices by tricking homeowners into signing oppressive, 40-year real estate agreements.”
MV Realty has been under scrutiny in multiple states recently for enrolling clients in its Homeowner Benefit Program, which gives homeowners $300 to $5,000 in cash as a loan alternative in exchange for the exclusive right to list their home if they choose to sell it in the next 40 years.
“We allege that MV Realty is preying on vulnerable people to trick them into unfair, long-term agreements,” Stein said in a statement. “My office is taking them to court to put them out of business.”
According to Stein’s office, the state’s Department of Justice has received more than 20 complaints about the company’s business practices.
Stein is the fifth state attorney general to sue MV Realty. Attorneys general in Florida, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio all filed lawsuits against the firm in late 2022 and early 2023.
In the Massachusetts suit, a court granted the state attorney general’s office a preliminary injunction in early March that restricts MV Realty from engaging in unfair and deceptive marketing practices, prohibits the company from obtaining or recording additional mortgages during the pendency of the litigation, and requires the company to release existing mortgages.
In addition, Utah recently became the first state to pass legislation that bans the usage of right to list agreements. The law, passed in early March, makes right to list agreements unenforceable by law, restricts and prohibits the recording of these agreements in property record, creates penalties if agreements of this nature are recorded in property records, and provides for the removal of existing agreements from property record and recovery of damages.
“MV Realty remains confident that the Homeowner Benefit Program fully complies with the law and benefits consumers who receive a cash incentive to select MV Realty as their listing agent. MV Realty has voluntarily and temporarily paused entering into any new agreements,” an MV Realty spokesperson wrote in an email. “We hope to work with policy makers in North Carolina to address concerns and continue this valuable program as an option to homeowners across the state.”
In late February, the company announced that it was pausing the signing of new Homeowner Benefit Agreements.
