231–240 of 282 posts
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That’s only true if you are in a competitive market. There is a whole swath of land in flyover country and rural America where it can take awhile to sell a house.
Is that still the case? I feel like rural markets have really boomed in the last few years. At least I'm seeing that in the southeast. Maybe "flyover country" is different.
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.
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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.
A lot of buyer's agents fastidiously avoid FSBO properties.
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.
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not sure why you're getting downvoted. If realtors add more value than their commission, then great. Consider normies who don't understand why all this "tech stuff" costs so much money.
The average home sale price around here is around $1M. Realtors simply do not provide $60K worth of value to the sale of one.
As first time home buyers, she also held our hand through the psychology of the process which in retrospect was helpful. I think she got $40K commission out of that, which seems totally fair given the amount of effort and at the end of the day, she made a 1M+ transaction successful for us. Yeah maybe if we ended up bidding and buying the 1st house we ever saw, I'd feel differently, but this woman really worked her ass off and was well worth the fee.
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Title insurance is often required by the lender. If I loan you a boatload of money, I want to make sure there isn't any funny business about who owns what when you buy that the borrowed money. If there is funny business, that why I want you to have bought the insurance. Seems as reasonable as home owners insurance on a mortgaged property.
Lenders could internalize this risk, which is miniscule. But mortgages in the United States are a subsidized product. The real problem is that the lender wants to sell the note to Fannie/Freddie, who require title insurance. Title insurance is a total scam. Title insurers pay 3-6% of their premiums in claims [0]. Compare to auto insurance, which is ~80% [1], or home insurance (~50-70%) [2]. [0] https://www.ceicdata.c…
Title insurance is relatively cheap compared to home or auto insurance. It’s a one time purchase cheaper than the 6 month premium of either of the others.
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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 sold a townhouse in DC using a company that listed in the MLS for a flat fee (I think it was about $200). I held my own open house and got my target price from a buyer I met there. He did have an agent but I told them I wasn’t paying any commission. The agent thought I didn’t know what I was doing and tried to sneak a commission onto the sales contract. Typical real estate agent behavior. (I had sold and bought a f…
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> 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?
If my neighbor doesn't wire their home to code and it burns down and the fire spreads to my house it doesn't matter who is "responsible", I'd still lose my stuff (or my life). Hell, if my neighbor's tree falls into my property and causes damages I can't be sure I'd be fully compensated for my losses. You can take someone to court, but they can't give you what they don't have. People also just don't want to live in sl…
Someone else's property value is their problem, not mine. You're not guaranteed that the value of an investment is going to go up. It's called "risk", dude. Your opinion of what I should do with my property does not trump my opinion of what I should do with my property.
At one time, people claimed that their property values went down when a black family moved into the neighborhood. Guess what? They eventually had to suck it up and live with it.
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If my neighbor doesn't wire their home to code and it burns down and the fire spreads to my house it doesn't matter who is "responsible", I'd still lose my stuff (or my life). Hell, if my neighbor's tree falls into my property and causes damages I can't be sure I'd be fully compensated for my losses. You can take someone to court, but they can't give you what they don't have. People also just don't want to live in sl…
How many lives of man hours are lost from overhead for these costs and compliance? The issue is people enforcing these regulations see the dead bodies from the burned out home but not the dead bodies of the homeless or the kids with less food or the dude with untreated cancer because regulatory costs and materials safety margins sucked away money that could've been spent on other life critical things. At this point i…
Right. It's exact same problem as the FDA. If the FDA approves a drug and it kills people, they look bad. If they don't approve a drug and that kills people, no one blames the FDA because the FDA's victims in that case are invisible.