I don't know of any governmental restrictions for buying or selling your own home. There is no Realtor cost to YOU in BUYING a home. The commissions charged by Realtors to SELL your home are their compensation for the time they spend in getting your house on the market; advertising, broker open houses with food, etc, the time checking out possible buyers, and the shepherding of the sale through the process. Most Realtors will not waste their own time taking folks through a home if they don't think they can afford to buy it, unless it is just part of a tour to show buyers what all is out there. I enjoy seeing houses that are beyond our range, because it gives us ideas about how to do improvements to our home. Since we decided to sell and move, we go to Open Houses just to see what our competition is going to be. It also helps us see what sells, and what doesn't, by looking at which houses sold quickly, and which are still languishing on the market 6 months later.
We've considered doing a For Sale By Owner, and nowadays, you can sign up with internet realty companies that, for a small fee, will list your home on the MLS, which is the Holy Grail of Real Estate. If you can get your home on Realtor.com, potential buyers will see it, and can either contact you directly, or, if they're working with a Realtor, can have that person bring them to see the house. You, as the seller, have the option of offering a commission to the Realtor who brings the successful buyer. THAT gives Realtors an incentive to bring their clients to see your home, and widens your potential buying market considerably.
Say WHAT, Suzi??
Buyer's and seller's realtors split the commission all the time, all over the country.
And the 6% the seller pays the realtor could be a 3% price break to the buyer and 3% more for the seller if there was no realtor involved.
Not to say that realtors have no value. We could not have sold our house (vacant, we had already moved out of town) in the declining market of early '06 without one. But in the housing boom of 2002-04 many realtors were collecting huge commissions for almost zero work.
Realtors in several states are trying to keep discount brokerage firms from selling some services but not others. Realtors are seeking to influence legislators to forces everyone to sell the entire set of services or nothing.
I’m sure I can find more about it, if you are interested.
Also, I realize that buyers don’t pay anything, except that the real estate commission is factored into the price of the home. Duh!
Real estate agents are no different from most business people. They will use the force of government to protect their turf when possible.