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Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

wsj.com

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Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#341

Post by ZoomerCretin »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #333
lotsofpulp wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Websites have obviated the utility of a buyer’s agent “finding” houses for 90% of buyers. Setup alerts for the type of house you want, draw the geographic boundaries on Zillow, and spend 2 minutes looking at the listing and maps to find out everything an agent would have been able to tell you.

> find out everything an agent would have been able to tell you These websites are great and I'm glad the public has the information they have, but they don't tell the whole story - especially for someone coming from outside the market. I'm thinking here of just the last few of my transactions - flood zone issues, title issues, broken sewer lines, pricing, emblements, water rights - like needing to cure in order to p…

How can these services justify a large percentage of an asset with zero guarantees or clawbacks? You are seriously justifying all of that for a 6% of the most expensive asset anyone will ever buy? Why is it not a flat rate, i.e. $1-10k to sell a home?

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#342

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

UncleMeat wrote: post #229
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can do. If they market your house well you can maybe get another $100,000 (5-10%). At around 1-2% they're generally profitable to the seller.

The data does not support the claim that fsbo homes sell for six figures less than homes sold by agents, and that's with buyer's agents illegally trash talking fsbo.

The data doesn't have to. My claim is that a professional marketer can improve your price. You're then claiming from that not having them will reduce the price you get, which is a logical fallacy.

Also note the percentages I gave, it obviously depends on the price of the house.

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#343

Post by cpncrunch »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #280
cpncrunch wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its been happening to all their articles for the past day.

in fairness that's a pretty tight window for parent commenter to notice. +1 it's never not worked for me

Yes indeed, and i wasnt blaming them. I now just flag any articles that are stuck behind paywall.

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#344

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

walthamstow wrote: post #212
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine living in Dover, and deciding to move just 26 miles to Calais. Quelle horror! You will need to do the licensing all over again! (at least, you certainly will post-Brexit; not 100% sure what the pre-Brexit story was on that, but I have a feeling it may have similar)

I'd rather not imagine living in Dover if you don't mind

I missed your nick :) Fellow E11 (or rather, ex-E11-er) here.

I just picked it because it was closest to the border. You can have Brighton or Hastings or Rye if one of them works better for you.

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#345

Post by 0xBDB »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #143
tempsy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone living in California or NYC and making mid six figures and up is easily paying more than German tax rates then. You’re paying almost 50% around high six figure range. I’ve never quite understood why people think the US is a low tax country.

>You’re paying almost 50% around high six figure range. That's a gross oversimplification and thus very misleading. While your marginal tax rate on taxable income (not gross income) might be close to 50%, if you are married filing joint, a homeowner, and have children, you are not paying anywhere near 50% effective tax rate[0] on your total income, due to deductions and exemptions, credits, tax-deferred retirement co…

Depends on your definition of "mid six figures" and your source, but it at least doesn't appear very misleading. At $450k it looks like the federal effective tax burden is 35% and the New York tax burden is at least ~16% (the data are not broken out by income).

https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/tax-burden-by-state...

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#346

Post by arcticgeek »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #307
arcticgeek wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is customary, at least in some locales (US-AK), that the commission is split evenly between the agents.

I would caution against assuming that anything related to commissions is actually customary, including an even split. All of this really is negotiable, and when I think about the past year, I've seen multiple occasions where different splits were offered. For example - I referred some business to an agent in Tennessee, who in order to pay my referral* convinced seller to offer a lesser split to the buyer's agent. I k…

yep, agreed. I know and have talked to some brokers about this in the past, and also closed a few deals as both a buyer and a seller. The commission was split evenly in my experiences but I should have said ‚typical‘ even if only as a starting point in negotiations.

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#347

Post by akomtu »

ssharp wrote: post #21

I 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 agents are useless in nearly all cases. The useful ones are called real estate attorneys, and only when it's the buyer's market. A standard buyer agent is a kid who finished a 2 week course on how to fool the buyer. His or her core competencies include: subscribing your email to an automated mls search that spams you with irrelevant listings every week, actually reviewing the listings according to your criteria is beneath them because it's real work; on the showings the agent persuades you to write an offer for the listed price, and never bothers to look for possible defects that may ruin the deal, such as foundation cracks; the agent has a inspector buddy who can write a stellar inspection report, after having inspected its lawn only; the agents are gravely offended by the idea of reducing their commission to something more sensible; they show a great resolve at pushing you to sign an exclusive contract for a very long term, and insist on bearing no responsibility.

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#348

Post by yesimahuman »

runako wrote: post #233
yesimahuman wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just sold a house in the US and the thought of listing it ourselves did cross my mind, but in the end we used an agent and they did _everything_ for us while I was out of the country, and got us a great price. In the end the amount of commission we paid to our agent (3%) didn't feel excessive at all since I barely had to lift a finger (besides moving). Now, 3% for the buyer's agent? _that_ felt excessive.

The thing about proportional pricing is that it doesn't scale up or down. Assuming your sale was near the median US home price, the seller's agent would net around $12k for their work. You believe that was worthwhile, let's assume that was money well spent. Suppose the market was hotter when you sold and your property was worth 2x the median. Is the same work worth $24k? What if you sold in a hot market in a hot neig…

It's a fair point. Want to note one thing I found strange: the city I sold in (very hot market) had 3%/3% as standard, and the one I bought in (less hot) had 2.4%/2.4% as standard (at least in the area I bought). I don't know the dynamics of the industry here enough to know why that would be.

Re: Almost no one pays a 6% real-estate commission except Americans

#350

Post by dudul »

ghusto wrote: post #96
thiago_fm wrote: post #44

Wrong. 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…

I don't normally nitpick in this way, but the single line "Wrong." rubbed me up the wrong way. The claim was: > Almost No One Pays a 6% Real-Estate Commission–Except Americans (wsj.com) and you've cited an example which fits neatly into the word "almost", _right there as the first worth in the sentence_

After how many counter examples do we go beyond "almost no one"?

It's like opinion articles saying "many people think blabla" where "many" is 3 tweets.

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