The Department of Justice (DOJ) has a new principal deputy assistant attorney general, and he’ll be familiar to some real estate brokerage leaders (and NAR’s lawyers). The government announced the appointment of Roger Alford to this post earlier this month.
Alford previously served as deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Antitrust Division during the first Trump administration.
During his time away from the DOJ, Alford was a tenured professor of law at the University of Notre Dame Law School. He also worked as a consultant on various antitrust suits, including the Sitzer/Burnett commission lawsuit, on which he served as an expert witness.
The real estate industry had been optimistically hoping for a lessening of antitrust scrutiny under the second Trump administration. The appointment of Alford, however, appears to signal that will not be the case.
In addition to Alford, the DOJ’s antitrust division is currently led by well-known antitrust hawk Gail Slater.
“How this plays out remains to be seen as to focus on the realty industry, but those who believed there would be more of a ‘laissez faire’ philosophy at antitrust were certainly surprised by Ms. Slater’s nomination,” Chuck Cain, an attorney and the president of Alliance Solutions, told HousingWire in December after Slater’s nomination.
Despite the change in administration, the DOJ has remained involved in several real estate industry lawsuits, including the Nosalek commission lawsuit and the appeal of the REX Homes suit against the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Zillow.
For his part, Alford testified in the Sitzer-Burnett case that NAR’s Participation Rule “is not designed to benefit home sellers.” He also alleged that it was created to protect the trade group from non-MLS affiliated brokers.
Alford further told the jury that he viewed steering as a fundamental problem in real estate.
