Here in Portugal it's 5% + VAT 23% so over 6%.
It's like a cartel - they all point blank refuse to negotiate and most insist on exclusivity. Bit of a shock after selling a house for 1% commission in UK.
Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
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Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#52I think this very much depends on the agent. My wife is an agent and busts her ass. When she's a seller agent, if it's small jobs like painting a room, covering up spots, changing a massively outdated light fixture, she does it her self. She's spent days a time landscaping.
Also when it comes to pricing, it helps to know the market. She will list a house for 8% under market value because she knows it will draw interest and end in a bidding war with escalation clauses.
She also knows other agents and other lenders and that's very important when you have a timeline. One offer may look good but you know the agent and know they will give you an artifically high offer and then ask for 10's of thousands in remedies. Or if you're trying to get a deal done on a timeline so you can get another house and a buyer comes in with a lender that's just notoriously bad at doing things on time. You may take an offer for a few thousand less when you know a deal will end on time.
Like most things, you get what you pay for and there's plenty of people out there willing to take your money and do nothing. There are good realtors and bad ones.
Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#53If you divide 6% commission by hours spend, how much does an agent earns per hour? Probably more than senior Google AI developer?
And yet the stats tell us the average U.S. agent is only making on the order of $60k / year, so… how’s that work?
Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#54Wrong. In Germany the Maklerprovision (comission for the Real State agent) is 7%. Typically, the seller pays half of it, but there are cases where the buyer pays it all. You also need to pay a notary, government taxes, making the cost of buying a property over 12%+. Furthermore, you shouldn't sell that property for around 10 years, otherwise, you'll need to pay Capital gains taxes. The good part is that you don't pay…
In Brazil it is 6%, some agents used to charge even 8% or 10% but the trend is towards 5% (since real estate became expensive here as well in the last 12 years).
Brazil is pretty cheap in that regard, what is expensive there are property taxes.
Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
A nortary makes sure the sale ia properly exevuted and titles properly transferred, he is certifying the transaction and takes on some legal riks dor doing so. This provides legal security for seller and buyer, a service woth paying for in transactions most people only do once in their life (we talk about Germany here). For all others, it is just coat of doing business. No idea why it is always everybody else who sho…
Does the notary provide the title insurance (as in: if it turns out later that the seller didn't actually own the house, the real owner shows up and proves it, the bank and new buyers have their money covered)? That would make more sense for the 2% but it's not related to the notary in the US; notary literally just does "I checked the id of the person signing and it matches" which is a service that can be had for fre…
A notary in the UK is a type of lawyer (although not necessarily a solicitor) and requires special certification and training. Their job is to make sure all the paper work is in order and to sign off and legally certify that is in fact so.
Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#56I don't know how much value agents added over the past few years, navigating bidding wars, pocket listing access, etc. but I've never understood the justification for spending so much money on these fees. The last time I sold a house was 2011, when the housing market was still down from the 2008/09 crash. I talked with multiple agents and never got a sense of them doing much to push the house other than listing it on…
The extra value is not there. Anyone can do this job, it's literally filling out boilerplate documents, you can ask gpt 4 vision to do it for you.
Sounds like a business opportunity if I’ve ever heard one
Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#57I don't know how much value agents added over the past few years, navigating bidding wars, pocket listing access, etc. but I've never understood the justification for spending so much money on these fees. The last time I sold a house was 2011, when the housing market was still down from the 2008/09 crash. I talked with multiple agents and never got a sense of them doing much to push the house other than listing it on…
> The buyer doesn't bear the cost at all, so why not utilize that convenience?
The buyer is (typically) the only one bringing money to the table at closing. They're paying for that convenience one way or the other. (To partially counter this, I negotiated a rebate of the commission I was paying [as a buyer] on our current house purchase. IIRC, the check I got back was four figures and started with a 8.)
Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#58Wrong. In Germany the Maklerprovision (comission for the Real State agent) is 7%. Typically, the seller pays half of it, but there are cases where the buyer pays it all. You also need to pay a notary, government taxes, making the cost of buying a property over 12%+. Furthermore, you shouldn't sell that property for around 10 years, otherwise, you'll need to pay Capital gains taxes. The good part is that you don't pay…
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Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#59I don't know how much value agents added over the past few years, navigating bidding wars, pocket listing access, etc. but I've never understood the justification for spending so much money on these fees. The last time I sold a house was 2011, when the housing market was still down from the 2008/09 crash. I talked with multiple agents and never got a sense of them doing much to push the house other than listing it on…
We’ve bought two houses, sold one, bought a lot to built a house for my parents. We’ve never hired a real estate agent. The seller had an agent for the first transaction, none of the other counterparties had an agent. Paying a lawyer by the hour to handle things is simpler, cheaper, and a random lawyer is dramatically more competent than a random agent (the most complex transaction ended up costing us maybe $4k in lawyer fees-the standard 6% on that sale would have been $40k!)
Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans
#60I don't know how much value agents added over the past few years, navigating bidding wars, pocket listing access, etc. but I've never understood the justification for spending so much money on these fees. The last time I sold a house was 2011, when the housing market was still down from the 2008/09 crash. I talked with multiple agents and never got a sense of them doing much to push the house other than listing it on…
The extra value is not there. Anyone can do this job, it's literally filling out boilerplate documents, you can ask gpt 4 vision to do it for you.
I agree and disagree with this.
Contracts (which is what I assume you're talking about) are only "boilerplate" in fair-weather deals. But if literally anything goes wrong during the escrow period, then the wording of that contract suddenly becomes critical. When tens of thousands of dollars are at stake, I'd never rely on AI-generated output.
That being said, I also agree with you as for the value of agents, because they're the ones who write these contracts and to be honest, most of them are pretty stupid. We really need real estate lawyers to be drafting these things, not relying on templates. A good contract is worth a hefty fee.