“Basic intelligence” you must not know how dumb the public is…
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I really want to see realtors get paid hourly instead. We end up doing a lot of free work for people and then charge others ridiculous amounts money for little bits of work. A fair hourly wage for realtors would be 100-200 an hour or roughly half price of an attorney. On the low end that’s equivalent to a $50 W2 wage.
Yeah realtors should get paid a paper processing fee. $1000 or something. But not tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Sellers can show prospective buyers the house, they don’t need a middleman.
And if sellers want the extra service of showing houses, pay a set fee. Maybe X$ per showing.
That’s the future post NAR lawsuit.
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It really should be ala carte. Now I see a lot of buyers take advantage of agents simply because its “free” which creates resentment and more useless unproductive work. Putting a price tag will help on the stupid stuff. For example, $200-$300 per showing would weed out a lot of tirekickers. You wanna see 30 houses cause it’s “fun”? Have fun paying 9k. You wanna be serious? Okay, 3k and you just bought a house!
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I’m very familiar with how dumb the average realtor is.
Yep exactly. In states that use attorneys, each transaction goes through a RE attorney whose fee is typically fixed and much lower than what the realtors charge, it’s absurd. The attorneys have gone through law school and passed the bar, the realtors took a 2 week course and an exam a toddler can pass.
We actually know how much realtors would accept to open doors. Redfin contracts a lot of independent agents for a fixed fee per showing. They pay $60 for the first showing and $10 for each additional showing.
https://www.redfin.com/careers/real-estate/associate-agents
Plus in most countries either the seller or the seller’s agent does the showings.
Right but real estate agents need to WORK for the person they are representing.
There is NO reason that my BUYERS agent should be incentivized to have me, THE BUYER, pay more just so they get a higher commission. MY agent should work for ME.
Exactly, the problem is that the pay structure isn’t done properly. There’s a bunch of issues regarding the commission structure. And it doesn’t get better with the new NAR settlement either
Why not? I would rather pay a flat fee for my realtor and have him/her fight for ME
Because many homebuyers (especially FTHB) don’t have the money to pay for buyer’s agent fees. Which means the group that most needs an agent can’t afford it. Which means that they are more likely to get screwed in a transaction.
and the public is even dumber. Like literally 20% of Americans don’t know what a credit score is and you expect them to buy a house on their own.
I have bought three properties over the last 12 years. Two of them without real estate agents involved and my last one through real estate agent. They absolutely do not deserve money being charged for so called services provided. My last deal agent herself wasn’t even the one doing the showing but it was her mother who is not licensed. All they contributed to deal is price inflation and two hours of an open house showing. First time I met this lady was at closing when she came to pick up $50k check and was gone in 5 minutes. Either get paid a reasonable flat fee or per hour nothing else is worth it. It’s 1995 anymore and 99% of what agents “offer” can be done without them. I’m looking at buying another property right now and seeing some prices getting reduced slightly but it’s still a crazy market out there. I seriously don’t know who’s paying $1.2 million for two family home at 7.5% interest in Queens with no backyard or garage.
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I seriously don’t know who’s paying $1.2 million for two family home at 7.5% interest in Queens with no backyard or garage.
New money Chinese and developers who will renovate or rebuild so they can sell to a higher bracket of new money Chinese. And people who think that more than X families can live in a X-family home, if you catch my meaning. All with likely better financing than 7.5% on ~80% of the selling price.
I may have missed it but the biggest reason to use real estate agents and brokers is to protect yourself from fraud/scams/liabilities that can be a massive headache to navigate. I do agree that the suggested 5% fee is excessive but again that fee is negotiable. If you don’t use an agent/broker, make sure to use a lawyer to go over the contract. I buy/sell all my properties with an agent/broker for peace of mind but my fee structure is 1% to listing agent and 2% to buyer agent. If you don’t pay that 2-2.5% buyer commission, your potential buyer pool shrinks substantially.
That’s basically what’s happening. House I was looking at sold 585k cash deal they did cheap basic Reno in two months now asking $980k. Asian buyers and sellers all around.
Similar story across many parts of the country, I’m sure. I’ve seen it first-hand around Queens and parts of Long Island over the past 20 years, but it’s ramped up even more recently.
Yet somehow, literally 99% of buyers in UK and Australia do just fine without a buyers agent. Not that most agents know anything about financing.
The tiny percentage of buyers who still want a buyers agent can hire them just like they do in the other countries. If they cannot afford to pay for one, they can increase their offer price and have the seller pay. This system already exists here with non-qm mortgages. Borrowers can choose between borrower paid comp, where they pay the broker directly, or lender paid comp, where the lender pays but the rate is increased to compensate.
This isn’t fucking rocket science, it’s a solved problem in the rest of the world. Americans and Canadians are not dumber than the Brits or Aussies. You’re making the exact same arguments car salesmen made in the 90s and 00s when the switch to online advertising began.
This isn’t 2019, it’s nearly impossible to get money out of China now, and flippers have slowed way down.
The real answer is millennials are a lot richer than you think and they’re having kids and need a house.
So says you and the CCP, but it’s happening nonetheless, if not through officially-sanctioned avenues. Flipping slowed down but is still happening.
Also, I did say “over the past 20 years,” more referring to those who moved here with a more modest level of wealth and worked to grow that wealth. Believe me, I’ve met a number of them.
There are certainly millennials buying houses but many of the people I’ve seen move in are of the previous generation. As long as we’re just making sweeping generalizations, neither of us is really wrong. I’m just giving my anecdotal experience in a specific area.
So says everyone familiar with the situation. You haven’t been able to take money out of China through officially sanctioned avenues for a decade now, but even the unofficial methods(such as getting 50 people to use their $50k/yr allotment for you) have been shutdown. We’re well past unofficial channels and into actual money smuggling now. The primary methods of getting money out of China today as an individual is to hand carry gold bars or cash to Japan. Can’t do the US because the customs will throw a fit if you flew in with a suitcase of cash of gold bars. Crypto still works for small amounts but for large amounts it’s very difficult.
Immigrants have good jobs and make a lot of money yes. So what lol?
You’re just really underestimating how much money perfectly ordinary jobs pay. Here in California a married public school teacher couple with 10 years of experience has $200k household income from teaching, not including any side gigs they might have.