101–110 of 317 posts
I'm still waiting for someone to completely eliminate the realtor and charge a reasonable flat fee ($1000?) to buy/sell a house and handle all the related details. Why do we need realtors at this point? Everyone finds houses themselves online nowadays. Why does anyone need to pay a whopper commission to some middle-man?
"I'm still waiting for someone to completely eliminate the need for a software engineer and charge a reasonable flat fee to bolt together some libraries and handle all the related details. Why do we even need software engineers at this point? Everyone can find the libraries and open source tools they need online nowadays. Why does anyone need to pay a whopper paycheck to some middle-man?" You're paying for someone's…
Also I love when people decide that the way someone else earns a living makes them overpaid and not worth what the market is paying them.
In the end as I said in another comment most people selling real estate aren't making tremendous money doing it with all the time wasted on people who don't end up buying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me offer a different viewpoint. Redfin absolutely serves a purpose, but in some markets, notably for my case very hot markets, it's a significant impediment. I really wanted redfin to work, shopping in seattle 2 years ago. I tried for almost a year, but they would consistently be not as contactable or prompt as we wanted, and gave us very erroneous advice when it came to crafting offers on some houses we wanted.…
I bought a house in SF three years ago through Redfin. The realtor that Redfin gave us was prompt, aggressive, and thorough in the bidding/closing process. What he didn't do is drive us around to open houses or suggest places to us. Which we didn't want anyway. I suspect that the individual realtor you get through Redfin has a big impact on your experience with the site. It sounds like you got a bad one and were unha…
I absolutely agree the individual realtor impacts the experience, that's pretty much the crux of my whole issue :) My conclusion was that Redfin doesn't offer as much control/guarantee to ensure this, and in a hot market, this matters quite a bit.
(To be fair, I'd say the same thing about my experience with mortgage lenders, BoA did an abysmal job and very nearly left me in the lurch, whereas a smaller local lender picked up the slack and pulled our asses out of the fire. Perhaps my overarching statement should be to wonder if we (businesses) suck at scaling customer support? (I'm pretty much saying "well duh" to myself as I write this statement, frankly))
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I used to think the same way, but then I bought my first house and my realtor was insanely helpful. The entire process is filled with random quagmires that I would have never known how to manage otherwise. Someone with more experience may be more able to go it alone obviously, but my realtor was invaluable.
> The entire process is filled with random quagmires OK, but why is that? And how many of those "random quagmires" are coming from realtors? The real estate industry reminds me of the tax preparation industry or car sales in the USA. My opinion is they are all (by design) intentionally annoying, cumbersome, overly complex, overly expensive, and excessively time consuming, seemingly for no reason other than to protect…
Having completed thousands of home sales at Opendoor, I believe a system will works better for most home sales, but local expertise works better for high-end homes. An agent always make you feel like their differentiation matters. Redfin advertises their refined process across thousands of homes to sell faster for more money. Your neighbor advertises their local expertise and awareness to get you an edge. We joke tha…
Also thoughts on Ben Thompson's analysis on your company (https://stratechery.com/2016/opendoor-a-startup-worth-emulat...)?
I hope this company sees nothing but success. I bought my house through Redfin last year, and not only did I save ~$5k in commissions compared to a conventional realtor, I also felt the process was much smoother and more pleasant than other times I've interacted with a conventional realtor. It's simply absurd that in an era where any buyer can view photos of a house for sale online real estate agents still expect to…
> where any buyer can view photos of a house for sale online real estate agents still expect to receive 6% It's not the same as buying a car as you have to gain access to the property to look at it which involves another agent and much work even after an offer has been accepted or negotiated. The only thing that is 'absurd' is that the commission generally stays the same whether the house is 1.5 million or 150,000. A…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having gone through four home-buying episodes, where my wife (an ex-realtor) spent massive amounts of time trolling Trulia, RedFin, calling police departments, gathering reports from the local City Hall, I can tell you there is still a service to be provided by agents. And anyone who has bought a house knows that the collection of contracts that represents "buying a house" is not a small collection, and errors can be…
I'm currently working on solving this problem, hoping to launch in the next year. The truth is the average real estate agent doesn't have a college degree and has been in the business for less than 3 years. And in a hot market, when houses sell in a week, the agent is worth even less. What marketing plan is going to sell a house in a week? None at market value.Furthermore, buyers are walking into transactions thinkin…
Do not agree. Markets are only collections of people, and brokers know people, some of whom are buyers and a few of whom are the perfect buyers. Reaching those people is the marketing plan. Also, this is not buying airplane tickets, this is the single most costly and complicated process buyers and sellers will likely go through in their whole lives, so time frames of a week are fantasy.
- inspector (arguably a good one is more useful than realtor by pointing out foundation problems and other issues that can cost 10s of thousands)
- attorney (again, arguably more useful. they can point out clauses and things like flood zone, unpermitted work, liens on the property, etc.)
- appraiser (you might not even be able to get a loan if the house appraises for less than the purchase price, unless you can foot the difference and/or waive appraisal contingency)
- lender (unless you're paying all cash. some lenders have vastly different interest rates they can offer you, given a credit score. this can save you 10s of thousands).
Additionally, it doesn't really make sense. The realtor's value is not proportional to the price of the home. Even if you believe a realtor is extremely valuable, a house being twice as much in price wouldn't make them twice as valuable.
Redfin is definitely an interesting step in the right direction towards fixed fee realty.
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> where any buyer can view photos of a house for sale online real estate agents still expect to receive 6% It's not the same as buying a car as you have to gain access to the property to look at it which involves another agent and much work even after an offer has been accepted or negotiated. The only thing that is 'absurd' is that the commission generally stays the same whether the house is 1.5 million or 150,000. A…
Can I just pay a real estate agent per hour instead? That solves the problem of me deciding to not buy a house from them later.
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Expertise at what, exactly? It's often incredibly difficult to assign any value to realtors except 'knowledge of market', which should be the easiest part to automate.
Knowledge of process, not just market. Which, don't get me wrong should also be easy to automate.
Zillow and Redfin have attempted to automate just the valuation of properties (with enourmous resources behind them), and still aren't as accurate as traditional appraisers. It's easy?
Edit: Even Zillow agrees. There's a million dollar prize if you can do better.
http://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/D24B68EC-4090-11E7...