ATLANTA Realtors and bankers are still sparring on Capitol Hill about banks rights to enter real estate brokerage but have made peace in Georgia.
Representatives from the Georgia Association of Realtors and the two banking trade groups in the state came said last week that they had agreed not to debate the issue this legislative session. They also agreed to recommend that the Department of Banking and Finance put a moratorium on the approval of real estate brokerage services until the issue is decided on the federal level.
All sides agreed if the federal government determined that real estate brokerage is authorized, there wont be a fight at the state level, said Joe Brannen, the Georgia Bankers Associations chief executive officer. And if we lose the battle at the federal level which we dont expect to we wont put up a fight either.
This topic has been hotly debated in Washington since December of 2000, when the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve proposed giving national banks real estate brokerage and management powers. But neither agency has given any indication of when an official rule will be released.
Georgia does not explicitly allow state-chartered banks to offer real estate brokerage, but it is permissible through an incidental-powers statute. The last time state regulators approved a banks entry into real estate brokerage was in November 1997, and $525 million-asset Community Bank & Trust in Cornelia remains the only one in Georgia offering these services. Mr. Brannen said that few of the 267 state-chartered banks are even interested in getting into real estate brokerage.
The states Realtors association was planning to introduce a bill in the current session that would have prohibited banks from conducting real estate brokerage, but it withdrew the proposal after the Georgia Bankers Association and the Community Bankers Association of Georgia came up with the settlement offer.
