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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

#131

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

brvsft wrote: post #85
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…

I had to sell my home while coordinating a cross-country move. The agent handled everything for me and did a good job on the negotiation given the fact that prices were coming down while this happened.

So did mine! But I paid 1.5% total.

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

#132

Post by RationPhantoms »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #67
voxadam wrote: post #14

Archive: https://archive.is/SHAht Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20231117124904/https://www.wsj.c...

Dude. I appreciate the diligence but did you click on either of those links?

This is the first time I've seen WSJ articles not be given full access from archive.

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

#133

Post by tempsy »

criley2 wrote: post #80
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.

I used "net average tax rate" from the OECD as an apples to apples comparison. Your reply is "what about the 1%ers who live in two of the most expensive cities in the world? What about THEM?" What about the 99.9% of Americans who don't make six figures in one of those two cities? I've never quite understood why people think America is a few million people living in 2 cities. You know there's 320,000,000 more us of ri…

There’s 50M-60M people between California and NYC.

At this point making “mid six figures” hardly makes you rich. You don’t have to be the top 1% to see a tax rate higher than the one you stated.

Point is arguing that Americans are low taxed when the highest paying jobs are concentrated in high tax states and cost of living is much higher ignores reality for many Americans who pay as much or more than Europeans.

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

#134

Post by shmatt »

yesimahuman wrote: post #116
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…

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.

Wouldn't you expect to pay a premium over someone who is home and heavily involved in the sale? If your service was worth 3%, maybe a regular one is worth 1%

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

#135

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

jasode wrote: post #75
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…

>I said "good riddance" to the agents and did an MLS self-list for like $400. [...] So back to my original point -- where is that seller value coming from? It's a puzzle to you because you had the personality & motivation to do the work of marketing+showing+negotiating the house yourself. You have inadvertently projected your DIY savvy onto other homeowners to do the same thing. But, a lot of home sellers don't want…

No one is arguing against agents, they're arguing against a fixed, non-negotiable 6% fee. The reason people are talking about DIY sales is because that is the only option left to them.

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

#136

Post by triceratops »

Technology has been able to do 80% of the job of a realtor for about 20 years now. The profession has only become more lucrative in that time. Legal action, not market forces, have finally brought it to a point of change.

Maybe in the age of AI there are some lessons us software devs can take from the real estate agents.

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

#137

Post by foogazi »

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 doesn't bear the cost at all

The buyer is the only one bringing money into the deal so they pay for both agents

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

#138

Post by codedokode »

tecleandor wrote: post #43
hef19898 wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

Sounds more like a lawyer or several competencies at the same time. In Spain the notary "just" works through the signature of the contract: - Checks the identities of the parties and their legal status - Makes "sure" both parties understand the contract - Verifies that the property can be sold (checks for legal issues in the national registry) - Serves as a legal witness to the signature - Sends a copy of the contrac…

Aren't most of the checks automated? E.g. you just fill a form in a government services website and get a PDF back?

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

#139

Post by ta1243 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #95

Here (England) people like to complain about the system, mostly because either party can walk away for free until the actual contracts are exchanged, but overall it is simple and cheap. Technically, estate agents are not required, lawyers are not required, etc. Seller and/or buyer could do everything themselves if they wished (unwise but they could) as long as no mortgage is involved (the lenders are the ones requiri…

Here in England, last time I sold I paid £1k flat fee to my estate agent, and about £1200 to solicitor to handle the sale and purchase (including things like various searches, handling the mortgages, etc), and another £500 for an independent survey.

That's less than half a percent.

I hear the Scottish system has benefits -- rather than the buying doing the searches, survey etc, the seller does. That means it's far faster to make the offer -- rather than "I'll pay £x, but first I need to invest £hunderds in due diligence", it's "I've seen all the stuff I would have to pay for, so due diligence is over, lets move.

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

#140

Post by criley2 »

criley2 wrote: post #80
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.

I used "net average tax rate" from the OECD as an apples to apples comparison. Your reply is "what about the 1%ers who live in two of the most expensive cities in the world? What about THEM?" What about the 99.9% of Americans who don't make six figures in one of those two cities? I've never quite understood why people think America is a few million people living in 2 cities. You know there's 320,000,000 more us of ri…

Oh, my bad, you actually included all of California in your quote. I corrected it to SF because most people understand that California is absolutely massive.

The median household income in California is $80k and of the 40 million in California, very few work in tech.

California actually has extremely progressive tax laws and extremely low property taxes, so while you're right that the actually wealthy folks do pay a European-level of taxation, the working class actually pays a dramatically tax rate than their counterparts in Europe.

Anyone with any knowledge of California knows all of this, so when you made such odd points that seemed to challenge it, I tried to help you by assuming you meant SF.

Point is: the vast majority of Americans pay vastly less taxes than Europeans and no weird focuses on outliers is going to change reality.

Funny side note: I still am the only person who posted OECD apples to apples data, which you have rejected un-critically with no sourcing and nothing but hand waves about your feelings. Hmmm.

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