

Ask HN:  I hated buying a house, how can we fix it. - d4ft

Hi all-<p>A close family member was recently in the market for her first house.  The process, with which I was designated helper, pretty much sucked from start to finish. Agents make some ridiculous fee, which totally sucks for sellers, and in turn, might inflate home prices.  The whole bidding process kind of sucks.  Finding out how much you can afford is also fairly obtuse. In sum, I would love to have had a nice "Mint-ish" website to help me along with the whole deal.    Is there any market for this kind of app, a sort of "marrily" meets "mint" for home buyers?  If so, what type of functionality would be useful?
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runT1ME
Redfin.com is doing pretty well right now in cutting down that fee...

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d4ft
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I guess I meant more of a handholding for the process
as a whole, not a better way to do search specifically.

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AmberShah
I think they are also trying to help consumers. I listened to an interview
where they said they have people on staff that will talk to customers and help
them through the process. They are trying to make the searching process (and
fees) make more sense. I think what you are describing may be more of a
feature to RedFin than a brand new idea.

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philiphodgen
There are some in the real estate brokerage community who are trying to change
the system. Check out <http://bloodhoundblog.com>. You may not agree with
their aims (keeping agents in the middle, for instance) but they are fighting
the good fight against the National Association of Realtors and, as they call
it, Rotarian Socialism. :-)

Boil it all down though and they are committed to using tech tools to give
their clients a better result. Any movement in that general direction is
praiseworthy.

One of the reasons that home buying is such a shit experience is frankly
because of government intervention. The quantity of useless paperwork required
in California is staggering and grows each year. I am not convinced that it
helps anyone involved in a transaction.

Information asymmetry and transaction costs. There are probably a zillion
little MVPs in real estate that can slowly attack one or both of these
problems.

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CaptainDecisive
There's a great deal of good info out there on personal finance blogs,
websites and books regarding mortgages and affordability. There is no shortage
of good information.

Remember most people are making the single biggest purchase of their lives, so
if they're not prepared to do a LOT of research and due diligence then I kinda
feel they only have themselves to blame.

The problem I see is that many people seem to think they can stick their head
in the sand and buy in help. Unfortunately said bought help might have other
motivations than their clients which can lead to problems (see 2007 real
estate crash and Great Recession).

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andrewtbham
You think it's bad now? When i was young my dad was a real estate agent and
the MLS had a total monopoly on all the data... so you basically had to have
an agent to find out the comparable house prices and get good list of all
houses for sales. these days with sites like zillow... make it much easier as
a buyer.

however, unless you buy from a FSBO (for sale by owner) the selling agent will
take both sides of the commision.

on the selling side... having a good agent can be a big help... especially in
this market, an aggressive agent may be the difference in selling or not.

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brudgers
The National Association of Realtors has a formidable marketing presence.
Their competition, like BuyOwner is no slouch either.

The market for "How to buy a House" is flooded with free sites and a full of
noise.

Given that home buying is in a downward cycle, the war chests of the
competition and the maturity of the market, I don't think there's much
opportunity.

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ia
i am currently going through the process with redfin. it has been hands-down
the best customer service i've experienced, doing anything, ever. the hand-
holding is there if you want it--in fact, i warned the "field agent" that
hand-holding would be required when we started looking at properties. she took
it in stride and was incredibly helpful.

