Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 310 posts

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#281

Post by knodi123 »

candiddevmike wrote: post #31
noleary wrote: post #28

Guys, this is so cool! I am strongly in favor of anything that cuts out rent-seeking middlemen. Every time someone mentions real estate to me, I immediately think back with intense resentment to the thousands upon thousands of dollars I paid brokers just to unlock crappy studio apartments for me in Boston. I was just out of school and barely had any money, but I was still paying a huge premium over the cost of rent f…

> Guys, this is so cool! I am strongly in favor of anything that cuts out rent-seeking middlemen. This company is another rent seeking middleman.

And has been openly sneering at competitors whose prices are too low, and at the idea of price transparency.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#282

Post by in_cahoots »

greenfish6 wrote: post #235
in_cahoots wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many residential houses have you personally bought or served as a realtor for? In my experience everything other than rote paperwork and sending over information is done via chat or in person. No realtor is going to walk a first-time buyer through an inspection report via text message or email.

When I bought my house as a first time buyer in sf, my agent walked me through my disclosures over email..

So you bought one house with a bottom-tier agent who wasn’t worth the money and now you’re trying to recreate that experience at the same cost? You don’t even understand what your competition is. A good buyers agent- one who actually does this full-time and makes a hefty profit- is worlds away from what you experienced.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#283

Post by modoc »

greenfish6 wrote: post #23
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My realtor was invaluable when I bought a house. He had a lot of valuable guidance on what to look for and what to avoid, as well as advice on how to make our offer stand out in a seller's market. I'm not saying that there aren't realtors who are just parasites, but some do earn their pay. Mine was one such.

Prior to the Aug 17 settlement, Keller Williams said ~65% of home buyers in the US used the first buyer agent that they met. The quality bar is very low to become a realtor (3 months of online coursework). Realtor reviews are cooked and completely fake online. So it is not a big jump to say that the average realtor experience is poor as they are usually driven by a single advertisement or a single Zillow link for mos…

Sure but the first real estate agent I met is the one that was most highly recommended by my friends and colleagues, and has stellar online reviews. It wasn't some random person...

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#284

Post by modoc »

greenfish6 wrote: post #115
gycom wrote: post #76

Hey, can you send your AI agent over to this house I'm looking at and measure out the bedrooms for me? Also, there's tile in the kitchen; was it laid correctly (tile under baseboard) or was it laid badly (burying the bottom of the baseboard)?

Human buyer agents wouldn't do these things that you're asking

I've bought multiple homes in my life and my buyers agents always did that type of thing and more.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#285

Post by in_cahoots »

evantbyrne wrote: post #237
poulsbohemian wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>agents were colluding to keep fees artificially high Sitzer-Burnett involved a very narrow definition of collusion... essentially one Kansas City MLS had a mandatory input field for a seller-paid buyer commission. Realizing the risk of copycat lawsuits, the NAR got involved and decided to settle. Both Sitzer and Burnett should have gone after their own agents rather than turning this into a national issue. >My predi…

The mandatory "Buyer Broker Commission Rule" was in the NAR Handbook, which was binding for MLSs. Moehrl vs NAR went after twenty offending MLSs and the four largest national real estate broker franchisors in America. They got caught red handed price fixing they had no choice but to settle. Realtor services are valuable, but they aren't worth 6% of a person's largest investment. On the median home that's $24k, which…

I just sold a house. In August I signed some paperwork saying we would offer 2.5/2.5 to buyer and seller, just verbally. The seller agent heavily pushed this, saying that we don’t want to work with an attorney and put everything at risk; he wants to work in his network.

All the buyer offers we received were also expecting 2.5%.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#286

Post by mooreds »

eagleinparadise wrote: post #29

Best of luck. I’m a commercial real estate professional who has spent time as a broker, lender, and private equity investor. Residential definitely is a lot More of a ridiculous market. But ultimately as an agent, you get hired to work with mostly irrational actors (sellers and buyers). As someone who is very interested in AI and taught myself how to code (I don’t know any other real estate people who know anything a…

I worked in real estate for about 8 years as a software developer for a tech-forward brokerage.

There's a ton of money and data flowing through this industry. There are plenty of dilettante agents who are far overpaid. There've been a number of startups trying to tackle this (ZipRealty, Zillow, Compass OpenDoor).

My cynical take is that these startups begin with consumers, but end up serving agents and brokers, because that's where the money is.

So I don't think displacing the agent relationship is going to be a winning strategy, because buying a house is a rare large purchase of a non-fungible asset which can positively or negatively affect your life. (Not talking about investors.) Just like folks hire lawyers for divorces, accountants to review ISOs, or business sellers hire brokers, there is value in hiring an expert for high-stakes, rare purchases.

This is a great book about the value of middlemen: https://www.amazon.com/Middleman-Economy-Brokers-Everyday-Ma...

However, there is plenty of room to improve the user experience and make things simpler, and this seems like a good start.

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#288

Post by Terretta »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #207

Real estate agent and (mostly) former software developer here... every time real estate comes up on HN I lose about 50 status points, but here goes nothing... Just thinking about a few transactions that come to mind... 1) We've got a feud over two trees and had to call in an arborist and a structural engineer. 2) I've got an orchard with a ROFR and a big city lawyer on the other side of the deal, on a property with a…

> At 3% my services are cheap

Do you give % back if none of the above came up? Or is the 3% insurance, where people without issues are covering the costs of other people's issues where 3% would be too little?

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#289

Post by mbesto »

whiplash451 wrote: post #92
keeptrying wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ludicrous 6% fee is whats going to drive adoption by end users and in turn by brokers. Move that fee to 1% for buyer agent and you have a massive market.

If there was a serious opportunity to arbitrage under the 6% fee, you bet that someone would have done it already — and well before the AI era.

Someone has tried - it's called OpenDoor and its stock is ummm not doing well: https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/OPEN

Re: Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers

#290

Post by evantbyrne »

in_cahoots wrote: post #285
evantbyrne wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mandatory "Buyer Broker Commission Rule" was in the NAR Handbook, which was binding for MLSs. Moehrl vs NAR went after twenty offending MLSs and the four largest national real estate broker franchisors in America. They got caught red handed price fixing they had no choice but to settle. Realtor services are valuable, but they aren't worth 6% of a person's largest investment. On the median home that's $24k, which…

I just sold a house. In August I signed some paperwork saying we would offer 2.5/2.5 to buyer and seller, just verbally. The seller agent heavily pushed this, saying that we don’t want to work with an attorney and put everything at risk; he wants to work in his network. All the buyer offers we received were also expecting 2.5%. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah buyer's agent comp will be the norm for the interim on listings. However, people are already listing without buyer's comp or like in my instance lower than usual comp, and as time goes on I would expect to see more buyers going the attorney route and factoring that they are saving sellers a few percent into the offer.

At the end of the day, it's not your agent's job to decide which agents he will work with, it is to sell your home and leave as much money in your pocket without exposing you to unnecessary risk. You'll still have the title insurance, the inspections, and the buy/sell agreement, so what is his problem with someone coming to the table without an agent if their paperwork is in order? To me, him insisting to only "work within his network" sounds like a huge red flag.

Post reply on HN