181–190 of 282 posts
Good for them. On the list pointless middlemen, they’re definitely at the top. One of the dumbest parts of the real estate commission scam is purporting the lie that “the seller pays the commission”. Anyone with half a brain knows that if money is coming out of a transaction, it’s a transaction cost being eventually passed onto the buyer.
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Remember there’s no professional responsibility for realtors, so they do shady shit like shop the house internally to keep the full 6%.
I encourage you to report any behavior you believe to be illegal or unethical to both your local realtor association as well as your state agency. That’s why those organizations exist and we are all better if people are held to professional standards.
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Just sell it / or buy it yourself. It isn't hard by any stretch. You can use a $200 listing broker on a MLS site. That is the big secret. Then it gets on zillow,redfin, etc automatically.
I agree with this sentiment, and I'm especially in favor of selling where you purchase services "a la carte" (e.g. pay a fee for a real estate attorney, a separate one to the escrow company, photographers if needed, etc.). However, if you say "it isn't hard by any stretch", I invite you to take a look at listings in your area and compare for-sale-by-owner listings with those listed by an agent. Half the time it looks…
I agree most FSBO pictures are awful. We were happy to pay for a service to help the listing look polished, and we firmly believe we got more money/closed faster because of it. With 7% interest rates on a 30 year mortgage, it would take about 5 years of payments to accumulate 6% equity to pay the commission to sell the house, before accounting for other fees (and appreciation).
We ended up paying effectively ~0.8% for the FSBO service and 2.5% to the agent representing the buyer. The agent was apprehensive, but the buyer really wanted our house. Everyone acted in good faith after the hail storm a few weeks prior to closing and everyone was happy as far as I could tell.
The problem isn't just realtors, it is that the whole system is designed to maximize transaction costs. Who cares how much the attorney and loan paperwork cost when they are only 1-2%, you are already paying 5-6% to realtors, ~.5-1% in repair costs, and often a part of the buyer's closing costs too? But if you think about that wholistically, that means sellers are paying 8-10% of the cost of a house every time they s…
The problem is 'buying agents'. Looks totally bonkers from over here (UK, I think it's foreign to at least most of Europe too).
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Your list of “mind-boggling” items all seem extremely reasonable to me. Your city and neighbors don’t want to be responsible for or have to deal with your house falling down because it was improperly constructed. And having lived in neighborhoods with septic systems most of my life, a little neglect can go a long way. Unless you’re building in the middle of nowhere (far from anything labeled a “city”), there are obli…
> Your city and neighbors don’t want to be responsible for or have to deal with your house falling down because it was improperly constructed. Why on earth would the city or the neighbors be "responsible" for that?
The sewer one is obvious, since it could be a public health issue -- if you screw it up you could wind up contaminating local water sources (or just stinking up the area). Issues with the lumber you use, or with your building plans, could potentially result in your house collapsing in such a way that it might damage your neighbor's property. And getting a new permit if you take too long is probably just a way to force you to check in and make sure that you're not deviating from the earlier plans you filed.
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Dumb, uninformed question here, but are there not some sort of For Sale By Owner systems that cut into the huge percents in closing costs? Or is the issue that you have to pay the buyers' realtor fees too and that's unavoidable? I'm trying to figure out why nobody's figured out "DIY MLS listing as a service without having to pay for a realtor". Maybe everyone who does this just gets a realtor's license or something.
I’m not a realtor but I considered selling my home myself once. Two issues I hit immediately: 1. I could not list the home in MLS as That system requires annual fees to use and you need to have a realtor license. 2. You still need to pay the purchasing side’s realtor otherwise they will simply not consider your home for their clients. That’s 3% that’s hard to get any lower. I ended up negotiating my realtor’s selling…
Additionally, if you were to decide to list "For Sale by Owner" and market it yourself, you can submit it to the major aggregators (Zillow et al), but their contracts with the MLS systems often disallow them from mixing MLS and FSBO listings in the same search result set, so the FSBO listings are hidden behind a toggle or something and go unseen by the great majority of people browsing.
The problem isn't just realtors, it is that the whole system is designed to maximize transaction costs. Who cares how much the attorney and loan paperwork cost when they are only 1-2%, you are already paying 5-6% to realtors, ~.5-1% in repair costs, and often a part of the buyer's closing costs too? But if you think about that wholistically, that means sellers are paying 8-10% of the cost of a house every time they s…
Dumb, uninformed question here, but are there not some sort of For Sale By Owner systems that cut into the huge percents in closing costs? Or is the issue that you have to pay the buyers' realtor fees too and that's unavoidable? I'm trying to figure out why nobody's figured out "DIY MLS listing as a service without having to pay for a realtor". Maybe everyone who does this just gets a realtor's license or something.
Buying or selling a home involves paying numerous middlemen thousands of dollars without having a clear idea what value they are providing in the process, except that if you don't pay them, you can't pay the next person in the line. Burn that whole industry to the ground as far as I'm concerned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I encourage you to report any behavior you believe to be illegal or unethical to both your local realtor association as well as your state agency. That’s why those organizations exist and we are all better if people are held to professional standards.
Is there a practical way to diligence theoretically unethical behavior?
- a broker with a client who is selling
- to pitch buying to another broker who has a client who is buying
- and for the brokers to work for the same company
I don't think so? It sounds obviously ethical