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

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

#181

Post by WillPostForFood »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #165
joshstrange wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing, the NAR settlement didn’t really change anything, the fee was always negotiable and there always were agents who would offer under 6%. They were typically scummy agents who didn’t last long (they popped up when real estate was hot then disappeared after they burned enough clients and/or the market cooled off). As in all things you will get what you pay for. I’m not interested in fighting with anyon…

This logic justifies any amount of fees. They can be excellent brokers and still not deserve $6000 (selling a $1M house) for maybe 40 hours of work as a very generous estimate.

They don't deserve $6,000, or $60,000 which is 6%!

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

#182

Post by bookofjoe »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #165
joshstrange wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing, the NAR settlement didn’t really change anything, the fee was always negotiable and there always were agents who would offer under 6%. They were typically scummy agents who didn’t last long (they popped up when real estate was hot then disappeared after they burned enough clients and/or the market cooled off). As in all things you will get what you pay for. I’m not interested in fighting with anyon…

This logic justifies any amount of fees. They can be excellent brokers and still not deserve $6000 (selling a $1M house) for maybe 40 hours of work as a very generous estimate.

6% of $1M = $60,000

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

#183

Post by joshstrange »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #165
joshstrange wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing, the NAR settlement didn’t really change anything, the fee was always negotiable and there always were agents who would offer under 6%. They were typically scummy agents who didn’t last long (they popped up when real estate was hot then disappeared after they burned enough clients and/or the market cooled off). As in all things you will get what you pay for. I’m not interested in fighting with anyon…

This logic justifies any amount of fees. They can be excellent brokers and still not deserve $6000 (selling a $1M house) for maybe 40 hours of work as a very generous estimate.

It would be $60,000, not $6,000 but they don’t make $60K. They spit the commission, $30K and then there are other people (broker) that get paid out of that amount, call it $20K to the agent in that case, sometimes less if they gave their client a discount (again this happened all the time before the settlement, I know agents that offered .5% off for repeat clients or friends and family and that came wholly out of their cut, so call it $15K in that case).

Even at $60K there are things an agent can do to swing the value of a house that much or more. Maybe you, the seller, will do some/all of those things, maybe you won’t.

Agents are effectively on-call 24/7 (your agent wasn’t? Sorry, see above: not all agents are created equal) and they often work in the off-hours for every other profession (aka nights and weekends).

Here is the thing, /most/ people buying or selling a $1M+ houses are not nickel and dimming. I sure HN has an outsized group of people who disagree, cool, I’ve seen it first hand.

I find it ironic that on a technology forum people are so quick to jump to “agents aren’t worth it” with so many people think the same thing about software developers and/or their quotes for building software.

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

#184

Post by cortesoft »

xienze wrote: post #157
cortesoft wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The seller is the one who signs the contract with the agent and determines what percentage of the purchase price goes to the agent. It doesn’t matter that the buyer was the source of the money, the seller is who decided what to do with it. If the seller uses 10% of the sale price to buy a boat, are you going to say that the house buyer bought the boat?

That’s a transaction that occurs after the sale. The paying of agents is something that happens as part of the sale, so yes the buyer is very much paying the agent fees.

It's coming out of the seller's cut, though.

Houses aren't sold at a fixed price. Buyers all put in bids and the seller chooses the best one.

The amount paid for the house isn't going to be less if there were no agent fees. The buyer is paying the specific price because there are other buyers who would pay slightly less. It isn't like buyers are adding money to their offer because of agent fees, and sellers aren't going to sell the house for less if they didn't have agent fees. The price point is market equilibrium, which means the agent fees come out of the seller's total.

Now, you might try to argue that more sellers would enter the market if sellers made 6% more on selling their house, which would increase supply and decrease price, but that's a big stretch... sellers are usually selling their house for reasons besides making 6 percent more.

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

#185

Post by pzo »

cortesoft wrote: post #112
theGnuMe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The 6% fee was paid by the sellers The buyer is the only source of money. The rest of it is just a shell game.

Well, the buyer’s employer is actually the one paying the buyer the money that goes to the mortgage, are we going to start saying the employer is the one buying the house? No, because that is just how the economy works, money changes hands constantly. We say the person who makes the choice for the purchase is the one who paid for something… the seller signs the contract with the agent, so they are the ones paying.

When you selling any kind of product or service the price you gonna charge will take into account expenses that you have to sell or make this product, e.g. if you sell app in appstore and Apple and other taxes will eat 45% of your app price and you know you will break even at $1 per app profit then definitely you will ask user for $2.

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

#186

Post by noirbot »

mym1990 wrote: post #178
joshstrange wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing, the NAR settlement didn’t really change anything, the fee was always negotiable and there always were agents who would offer under 6%. They were typically scummy agents who didn’t last long (they popped up when real estate was hot then disappeared after they burned enough clients and/or the market cooled off). As in all things you will get what you pay for. I’m not interested in fighting with anyon…

* All agents are not created equal * A good agent is absolutely worth it People aren't really arguing against these things. I don't get it, if the settlement didn't really change anything, why is everyone making such a fuss about it? My other question is, is there a linear correlation between effort to sell a home and its price? Is a 3 million dollar home 3x the effort to sell over a 1 million dollar home? Because I…

That may be a bad example - I'd imagine once you're into the multi-millions, connections actually do matter in a way they don't if you're trying to sell a $400k house.

I doubt it's much harder to sell a 600k house than a 300k house, but it could be quite a bit harder to sell a 4m house than a 2m house just because there's so many less buyers in the pool and they're likely to be a lot more particular than just wanting a roof over their head.

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

#187

Post by in_cahoots »

greenfish6 wrote: post #100
rpearl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the premise of your product appears to be that I'd be interacting with an AI. If I were to use it, I would not be hiring Raffi---would I? I was in a situation where the seller of the house, after signing our contract, halfway through closing, decided to try to accept another offer that would close faster. The seller attempted to get out of our contract when we wanted to enforce it and close. An AI wouldn't be…

The vast majority of agents communication is over text and email. It is quite rare that it is required that a realtor must make an in person appearance somewhere, usually that's just for first meetings. But yes, when stuff like this happens, we'll have a person do the required representation. Put it like this: if 90% of realtor time is spent on communication that is done over text an email, then each realtor will be…

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.

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

#188

Post by threeseed »

greenfish6 wrote: post #166
ramesh31 wrote: post #118

There's a reason why Guinan is still the bartender on Enterprise D, even though a perfect drink can be instantly made with a replicator. People like people. And people want to be sold on things by other people. You won't ever replace that. AI can help massively with paperwork involved. But at the end of the day there will always be a human holding people's hands through the home buying process because that's what the…

You can't get everybody. But, I'm sure you've bought a canned alcoholic beverage from a store before? That was made by a robot, are you ok with that? Your bartender also may pour you a drink from a can as well - I've seen this

You are conflating products with services.

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

#189

Post by simplyluke »

threeseed wrote: post #179
greenfish6 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our goal is not to rewrite every property description, but rather just link you the properties that we think you would like. If a property is mis-listed on Zillow, then that would be the same issue if a Realtor would send you that property as a recommendation

> How are you preventing hallucinations and plainly false information being sent to buyers You must have missed this part of the question. Seems pretty important.

Looking through the demo I think almost all of the experience is being powered by the zillow API, and a minor amount of summarization may be getting handled by an OpenAI API. I think the AI claims are largely but not entirely hype related. It's still not very clear to me what advantages this is giving me as a buyer vs a traditional agent or even being unrepresented and just using zillow's product offerings. Maybe I'm missing the point though.

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

#190

Post by cortesoft »

pzo wrote: post #185
cortesoft wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the buyer’s employer is actually the one paying the buyer the money that goes to the mortgage, are we going to start saying the employer is the one buying the house? No, because that is just how the economy works, money changes hands constantly. We say the person who makes the choice for the purchase is the one who paid for something… the seller signs the contract with the agent, so they are the ones paying.

When you selling any kind of product or service the price you gonna charge will take into account expenses that you have to sell or make this product, e.g. if you sell app in appstore and Apple and other taxes will eat 45% of your app price and you know you will break even at $1 per app profit then definitely you will ask user for $2.

This doesn’t apply to most people selling a house. Sellers are not setting the price for their house, buyers bidding for it do.

Anyone selling a house using an agent isn’t someone who manufactures houses. They are mostly people selling their own home because they are moving to a different home.

They are going to put their house up for sale, buyers will make offers, and the seller will choose the best offer. The buyers are making offers based on what they are willing and able to pay; they don’t care whether 100% of that sale price goes to the seller or if only 94% does. They are making the same offer no matter what.

And sellers aren’t going to take 6% less if they don’t have an agent. They are going to take the same offer whether they get 94% of it or 100%; they are taking the best offer made.

Even your app example isn’t how it works. There is no “break even” price for a digital good that doesn’t have a COG (cost of good). App manufacturing has a fixed price, and then every unit sold costs them zero dollars.

They are going to set the price to be what maximizes the value of “cost per unit * units sold”. That equation is going to be the same no matter what the App Store percentage is. The only thing the percentage does will be to change the amount of money the company makes and change the equation on whether it is worth making the app at all; once the app is created, the only thing that will determine the price is the equation above, not the cost per sale.

So many people seem to have this idea that prices for things are based on some “cost per good + profit margin = price”, but that isn’t how any good is priced. Many goods end up being priced in a way that is close to that, but that is only because of robust competition. Prices are set by the seller trying to figure out which price will generate them the most profit; the cost to make the good only sets a price floor, where if they can’t get more than that amount, it simply isn’t even worth it to make and sell the good. It has nothing to do with the price ceiling.

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