Feds probe real estate agents

They would get mad at us and insinuate we were asking too much.

A family member is a realtor, and she says people have no idea of the stress of trying to sell your own home (in certain markets), plus the fact that fisbos often do get less for their homes and are talked into unfavorable contract conditions that any decent realtor would have refused.

As for the "discount" brokerages, these are agents who provide minimal services (and often aren't very competent, because they never go into a deal very deeply). They are relying on the fact that the person on the other side of the deal will be a full-service realtor who will end up essentially handling both sides of the deal simply to get it to go through.

The old motto, "you get what you pay for," sure hasn't changed.

That said, I agree that people shouldn't pay too much, but the 6% is split between the selling and buying agent, so generally each actually gets only 3% (which is why agents like to sell a house that they themselves have listed). And statistics consistently show that houses sold through realtors sell for higher prices.

We sold our last house ourselves and were amazed at how easy it was. If you price it right, it will sell. Ours sold in two days. We had a lawyer do all the paperwork for us and everything went smoothly and on schedule...much better, in fact, than when we've had realtors selling our previous homes. And our costs were 1/10th what a realtor would have cost us. We felt stupid for listing with a realtor in our past transactions.

No one is forced to pay 6%. I told my broker it would be 5% or another broker. She took the 5%. Buyers don't need the Feds to intervene, they need to stop being pussies and learn to negotiate.

But understand when you are whining about the 6%, that people will work only as hard as their incentive to do so. Here is an interesting article about a couple who couldn't sell their place in Manhattan at 6%, and so offered 7% and raised their price...the place sold almost immediately for the new asking price. A good lesson in human nature and motivation...

The Seven Percent Solution

That is great, but i will not pay a realitor more the 3k to sell my house. If you do your research, price your property right, and prep the property right. And that should only take a weekend, you can save thousands in commissions.

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