I actually don’t hate realtors. In my jurisdiction, seller pays, so it kind of only feels like 3% to me. I have no idea if that’s economically valid, but when I’ve sold a house, I felt like I got my money’s worth on market knowledge and advice. Maybe I just had the fortune to be working with good people.

Possibly I’m a cynic but I suspect Redfin’s endgame here is not to reduce transaction costs but to capture those for themselves instead. Perhaps part of my cynicism is looking at transaction expenses in jurisdictions without realtors - usually there’s some middleman who tends to capture a single-digit percentage of transaction value (either a notary or the government or both or others). Funny how that pattern seems to repeat itself.