> Why the fuck do you deserve $10,000 for unlocking the door to an apartment I found myself?
Oh, mine didn't even bother with that. He cashed the commission cheque and flew to Paris the night before. True story.
I was so furious about having to pay someone I didn't hire that we almost lost the apartment; I covered the security deposit while my partner paid the broker.
Twitter is owned by the CEO of Tesla who has gone insane and has turned Twitter into his own little yellow-journalism platform that he has flooded with liars and used to amplify lies.
I understand that EM is the link between Twitter and Tesla. However, the topic of this thread is middlemen which are no longer necessary. No matter what EM does with Twitter, it has no bearing on the merits of direct-to-consumer car sales, of which Tesla is only one example.
Our real estate agent more than earned her commission when we bought in 2021. There was zero chance we'd have landed a house that year without her help, and landing when we did got us a record-low mortgage rate that has more than covered the commission already.
The problem is that there's no consistency, and you end up paying the same price regardless of how much value the realtor provides. When I bought my current house, it was the second one I looked at, out of several listings that my partner and I found on Redfin ourselves.
Our realtor's expertise was useful when we were making an offer, and when dealing with financing and paperwork, but I don't think she provided $50k of value. If I were paying a fairly generous hourly rate for her time, she would have made less than $5k.
Sure, sometimes a buyer's agent spends 100 hours helping their clients, finding and showing property after property after property, and has to deal with tricky negotiations, and is maybe worth the 2.5% commission.
But I don't want to pay $50k for 10-15 hours of work; that's ridiculous. (And of course I was paying for the seller's agent's commission as well.)
Another house I was involved in buying was similar: second house we looked at, only one counter-offer needed.
If/when I buy again I will likely not use an agent. The new rules around not foisting the commissions onto the buyer will help too.
>> There was zero chance we'd have landed a house that year without her help
Of course there was zero chance. Real estate agents regularly refuse to show homes to or entertain offers from buyers that are not represented by a real estate agent (unless they’re hoping to represent the buyer too - then they get both commissions!).
“I never would have been able to do business in a monopolized market without doing business with a monopolist.”
First, as noted by lotsofpulp, this isn't accurate: seller agents were always perfectly happy to deal with lone buyers because there's no other agent to share the commission with.
Second, to the extent there is monopolistic behavior that gets in the way (and there definitely is), that's not what I'm talking about. The market that year was completely insane because of the interest rates, and there is no way we could have navigated it ourselves, real estate agent monopoly or no monopoly.
I'm very glad that they've been forced to allow competition, and most real estate agents are horrible and should be avoided. All I'm saying is that in some markets a good real estate agent is absolutely worth their commission.
It was the opposite. Home sellers paid both the home buyer’s agent’s commission and the seller’s agent’s commission, so buyers’ agents would not show houses they wouldn’t earn commission on, and simultaneously, buyers would choose to use an agent because they would not save any money by not using an agent.
Now, I believe since the National Association of Realtors is not allowed to require their selling agents to share their commission with buyers’ agents, that everything is up for negotiation, and home buyers can save money by not using agents.
> There was zero chance we'd have landed a house that year without her help,
These situations are created and maintained by real estate agents because they want to keep themselves useful.
There's no reason we can't get a push notification to our phone when a house matching our criteria gets listed locally. Open app, check it out, decide to move on it or pass.
The only reason real estate agents are helpful is because they've created their own system that they control.
I'm not talking about her helping us to show up at a house—yes, we could have done that ourselves—I'm talking about how she helped us as first time home buyers to navigate the most intense housing market in decades and craft a persuasive offer that actually beat out multiple cash offers without losing us tons of money. We got the first house we made an offer on at a time when most young people in our shoes were despairing at ever getting a home.
That situation wasn't created by real estate agents, it was created by sub-inflation mortgage interest rates, and she solved it by deeply understanding what a home seller wants out of an offer. That's what a real estate agent is good for, and it's what I hope a larger percentage of agents are going to be good at now that the bad ones can't hide behind their monopoly.
> and she solved it by deeply understanding what a home seller wants out of an offer
When I sell things, even large value things like houses/boats/cars, it's the most money with the least amount of hassle in that order that wins out. I'd love to know more deeply what I really want when selling something.
>That situation wasn't created by real estate agents, it was created by sub-inflation mortgage interest rates, and she solved it by deeply understanding what a home seller wants out of an offer. That's what a real estate agent is good for, and it's what I hope a larger percentage of agents are going to be good at now that the bad ones can't hide behind their monopoly.
That's as may be, but the law in question is specifically about rentals not sales. WRT rentals, the price is generally not negotiable, the terms (at least in NYC) are prescribed by at least three city and state agencies, and until now, despite the fact that the broker acted as the landlord's agent exclusively, anyone who signed a lease (as the tenant) had to pay the broker.
That's a very different situation, and not analogous to buying a home, except that (usually) you will live there.
For a first time buying it can be daunting. I even used a 'good' agent in the past. But, what made her good was that her and her husband were also contractors and together they were effectively real-time home inspectors with any house we looked at.
Since then I've bought a house without an agent and am about to sell another. All you really need is a lawyer and the internet. Then there are services you can pay to get on MLS.
IMO, RE agents hosed themselves by not self scaling down their commission percentages as prices went up. Even people who do want their help will balk at paying someone 20k-30k+.
Same we saw something like 25 houses and 4 pretty serious offers before finally landing one. We absolutely would not have been able to navigate the market without that help. He came to every house, helped us know what to look for, how to make sense of seller provided inspection reports advised us on how much to offer, and how to write the most competitive offer. He earned every bit and more what he was paid.
Real estate agents have no business being in the mortgage industry.
Charitably rereading your comment - this agent sounds like they were a buying agent. Which should 100% be a real thing; but nothing like a real estate agent and more like a family lawyer / family financial adviser / family hostage negotiator all rolled into one.
Once sellers stop paying their commission buyer's agents are pretty much going to disappear. As I buyer I have no need to pay tens of thousands of dollars to someone for the work I'm anyways doing myself on Redfin and Zillow.
Agree for commodity listings. A good buyer’s agent will create the supply you want. Mine did it by getting the property before it hit the MLS. Others will convince someone who wasn’t going list just yet to sell.
