

Chipping Away at Realtors Six Percent - indiejade
http://www.flatfeelisting.com/60min.html

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gamble
People always approach this problem from the seller's side, presumably because
the seller is more aware of how much money goes to the agent. But the real
issue is that people use an agent to buy their home, and agents won't show
private sales. The MLS only matters because realtors exclusively show homes in
the MLS. If private sellers had access to the MLS, realtors would probably
find another way to avoid showing those homes and preserve their monopoly.

To attack the realtors, you need to do two things. First, sellers have to be
willing to share the savings with unagented buyers. There's no incentive for
buyers to tackle the process alone if they're stuck paying market price.
Second, there needs to be a fixed price service for home buyers. There are
plenty of fixed price agencies for sellers, but nothing for buyers.

------
indiejade
_Willis and Takeuchi's agent, Kelly Engel, used to be a traditional agent. "I
had done quite a few deals where I spent maybe five hours total working on the
deal. I never saw the house. My client found it online and, you know, I would
make $12,000 for four hours of work. And I thought this cannot keep going on
like this. Someone, I felt like I was going to get caught! You know, someone's
going to see that this is happening and I think a lot of them hold that truth
inside of them right now. They've got the clients that are finding houses on
their own. They make $20,000 and did 10 hours of work," she says._

------
JeremyStein
Whenever I read about bypassing real estate agents, I wish there were some
good statistics instead of just anecdotes. You might think you saved money by
doing it yourself, but could an agent have gotten you a better deal?

For an anecdote opposing the article, our neighbor sold her house during the
boom and reluctantly used an agent. There was a bidding war on the house and
it sold for 15% more than her asking price. I doubt that would have happened
without the agent.

------
lanstein
(from 2007)

