You never needed one prior. You can absolutely purchase real estate without representation of an agent, people do it all the time. I’d say probably 60% of my personal business occurs with people not represented by an agent
OT: Real Estage Agent Commission Changes
- Thread starter RU_03
- Start date
Homeowners and buyers need to revolt and cut out the middleman.
#revolution!
In my hypothetical , i did say you were bound to present all offers to your client. I am not implying realtor Skoolie is unethical, but I am implying there are unethical realtors out there . Just as there are unethical people in every profession and walk of life. It would be naive to think otherwise.
I haven't used an attorney on my last 3 home purchases and all went much smoother
I may be a bit naive here but that sounds like a terrible idea at least in NJ. Aside from the fact that the attorney, certainly in comparison to the agent, costs next to nothing in the grand scheme of buying a house, at least you have someone you can blame/sue with malpractice insurance if the contract or due diligence is screwed up.
what about advertising? Open Houses? Video's, photos, etc. It takes more than 20 hours of work to sell a home.
Most of the advertising I see as part of my current property search endeavors is all digital which takes the agent little time. Local flyers are basically dead = when snail-mail hits the mailbox the house is gone. I see less and less open houses these days and it doesn’t take more than 1 or 2 in this market unless the house is unsellable. Video’s = phone and drone no biggie. Photos = if professional seller should pay, but my iPhone 15 takes pretty good pics. I suspect a run-of-the-mill SFH transaction results in less than 20 hours of agent work if they were billing like lawyers do.
Attorneys(paralegals) review the contract, title search, coordinate the wires/payoffs, assemble the documents, etc. Now, I’m not suggesting it’s complex legal work especially if driven by forms which is why I think most attorney closing fees are less than $2K. There is certainly a lot on the line if something gets screwed up. And good/bad lawyers still have a JD and didn’t decide 9 months earlier to quit being a beautician or retire from teaching to take a course, pass a test, and apply for a license.
interesting that you are willing to pay an attorney $2K for meaningless work but not a realtor who does much more. The Title company does all the work you just listed down here in south jersey as part of the process, so why pay an attorney for work thats already being done by someone else?
Just curious - how many hours do you believe the average house has taken to sell in the last 5 years? Sold mine 3 years ago, the whole process from listing to closing was done in 4 weeks. One open house multiple offers sold in 4 days.
On the buying side I went to a bunch of open houses on my own, found a house that I liked and was forced to use a realtor to make an offer, sent a offer through docusign, sent a contract through docusign, then only saw him again at the inspection and closing. Had more interaction with my attorney than anyone in the process. I didn't pay that realtor, the commission came from the seller, but if I was to buy a house today, I would rather just do it myself, than pay a realtor to just send me a couple of docusigns and open a house during an inspection.
For $2K, if there is a contract or title issue in the future I would feel much better knowing I had a lawyer handling the transaction. In the grand scheme of buying a home in NJ the $2K is a rounding error. Whereas, the agent commission is a huge hit to the seller. The agent commission is like 15X-25X for average/median deals in many parts of NJ. I know the brokers here get very defensive as I would too when it comes to my livelihood. But selling/buying a home in 2024 is way easier than 2004…and 1984…yet lobbying and questionable practices by big brokers have kept the traditional commission largely intact.
Of course I'm going to be defensive lol!! That being said you didn't respond to my post so let's go with this:
How would you like it if I told you that your salary "is what it is, and you'll never be allowed a raise or a bonus." Food for thought my friend.
I'm not saying the gov'ment should intervene. I'm saying customers and homeowners should say no to high priced commissions. Free markets can cut both ways.
...and now they can. We have to negotiate terms instead of dictating them.
I have said this a few times, I would use a realtor to sell my home, I do not want to use a realtor to buy a home, but it seems like you are forced to since you need to contract a realtor to make an offer, or so Ruskoolie told us on here.
Sounds like a clear anti-trust violation. Making a buyer sign with a realtor because the seller did so. Not good.
You are saying the realtors don't do all that much and don't deserve the high commissions, yet most people use them when selling a home. Anyone can sell their home as a FSBO if they choose, no one is forcing home sellers to use a realtor. If it was that easy to sell and the agents don't do much, why isnt everyone selling on their own?? As someone who has bought and sold 5 homes since I got married, I never had a problem w/ the commissions paid because I felt that I got more on the sale price than I would have if I sold on my own. That being said I did luck out on the last home sale as my daughter was the agent and the guy across the street came over the day i listed it and said he would pay full price for it, so between the 2, what would have been a $62,500 commission ended up being $0.
Well for starters I think we can all agree that the NAR and large brokers are powerful and lobbied like hell, not to mention colluded with local brokers to hold the line on 5%-6% commissions. Easy example of BS practices was barring the public from MLS.
And honestly in today’s market they don’t do all that much. Before the internet, agents worked hard, really hard. They were the primary or perhaps only means of getting boots on the ground information. I’m not anti-agent = I just don’t think the commission structure works and is unreasonable given the new world of closing a transaction from A-Z.
Many attorneys could not handle the work of a beautician or a teacher. Law schools are degree factories and passing the bar in NJ is quite easy.
Sadly some people cannot understand that not everyone in this world is paid based on time spent on a job. They are paid based on knowledge and skill set. You are one of these people. I tell ya what though, since this job is so easy go to KYK's real estate school, take the class, pass the test, interview at my brokerage and in 6 months lets see how well you have done as an agent.
Ah yes...the FSBO. I personally love buying from those people. They love selling their house under market value to save money on commission.
My all time favorite story is one completely dense guy who didn't want me to sell his building (which I could have sold for 2M) because I wanted a 4% commission (and today I would charge 5). Too much money skoolie! its easy, etc. I'm not paying you 80k! Guy was maybe @RUAldo ?
Anyway, about a year later he sold it for $1,600,000 as a FSBO.
Guy lost $320,000 to save $80,000. Complete imbecile.
Sorry, even your single example here shows that it's a zero sum game with realtors. You say you would have got the house sold for $400k more. However, another realtor would have utterly failed at his/her job and cost a buyer $400k more by making a deal for $2m instead of the $1.6m. This is the definition of a middleman.
How about this. I will pay you a flat fee of $5k for the help and support for selling my house. I will do 2 independent appraisals and use the average as FMV. As incentive, you can have 50% of anything you get over FMV. Deal?
I had appraisals done. I'm going to list online and offer 2% buyers commission. My lawyer will handle the contracts and closing. Goodbye 6%.
I think requiring a buyer to have an agent when making an offer is a problem.
I’m no fan of lawyers but this comment is ridiculous because while I can’t speak for every state lawyers admitted to the New York State Bar are exempt from the educational exam and experience requirements to become a real estate broker. All a lawyers needs to do is apply to become a real estate agent. Nothing else.
No, wrong again. The buyer just wound up stealing the property. If the general market would trade at one price and someone buys it at a discount because it's off market that isn't hard to grasp.
Season tickets to hoops are sold out, in your example you would think me buying them from my neighbor for $20 a game without him trying to sell them on stub hub was the market price, when in reality if he puts them on stub hub they go for much more.
Appraisers do not know WTH they are doing. They screw things up all the time. I wish you luck but you're very likely leaving money on the table. Google the stats.
He has a point though. I deal with a lot of attorneys, the young ones especially are not great my any stretch.
The attorney who finished last in law school is still called an attorney.
I actually did something very similiar to this with my very first home I sold in Kendall Park back in the day.
