Wintergreen sales controversy goes legal
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The controversy over Wintergreen Resort’s decision to partner with a big Charlottesville-based real estate firm has erupted into a federal lawsuit, according to a story in this morning’s Daily Progress.
Mountain Area Realty, which purportedly holds a 30 percent share of the market for properties at the Nelson County mountain playground, is claiming in the suit that the new partnership between Wintergreen and Roy Wheeler Realty Co. could monopolize the market.
The issue first came to light in September with a Hook story by Courteney Stuart.
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[...] Monopoly in Wintergreen? By Jim Duncan Thanks to the HooK, I saw this story in the DP. Monopoly or healthy competition? At the very least, this should prove interesting. If partnering with Wintergreen is a monopoly, might this have ramifications with developments (not location-specific) that say “exclusively marketed by” whereby the implication is that buyers must use that company if they want to see the development? [...]
The issue is not so much access as it is price fixing. In a development where the houses are new and basically apples and apples the real estate company is pretty much a sales rep like at a car dealer. The price is set and options are added on etc. But when one real estate company has control over the bulk of the listings they can overprice everybody which creates a false shortage of housing, which causes the price to spike to meet the artificially high price. They wait until all of the other companies houses are sold and then get there price until the fair company gets more inventory, so the cycle is up and down etc.
They have a point that needs more investigation.