Hacker News Reader

Comment by themanmaran | Hacker News Reader

Who is your target market? I've certainly always wanted a product that lets me cut the realtor out of the loop. When I bought my house, it seemed if anything the realtor just got in the way. I had picked out the house on Zillow, and really just needed to see it once and put in an offer.

Then of course the realtor wants you to look at houses they represent (as a comp), and also introduce you to their inspector/mortgage/lawyer friends. It seems like the incentives just aren't aligned at all.

I imagine a lot of people in the tech scene feel the same. i.e. would love a "buy now" button that skips all the people steps. But I wonder how much that sentiment is shared by the broader real estate market.

View on HN

The target market is the personality of buyer who wants to do self service. Someone who finds houses on Zillow and just gets a realtor at the end.

Realtors are paid on commission which means that they want to transact high and immediately. Poor alignment with intent for buyers.

We have an offer drafting service on our website where all you need to provide is your email, phone, property, and price and we can go from there.

>> Realtors are paid on commission which means that they want to transact high and immediately

This is either naive or disingenuous. Do the math; realtors want to close fast but don't really care about the price the way the buyers and sellers do. The commission difference on a significant gap is not worth losing the deal.

>The commission difference on a significant gap is not worth losing the deal.

You get it better than the parent commenter... just this morning on a deal the other agent and I each agreed to chip in a bit to keep the deal together, even though the actual commission we will each receive is borderline not worth the effort. Real estate is a relationship business. We take care of clients they will come back and they will refer their friends. Yes deal flow is important, but just transacting high and fast is a good way to burn out both yourself and your clients.

Also, a huge percentage of deal volume comes from referrals. Successful realtors don't become so without thinking long-term.

Realtors still spend the majority of their time working on marketing themselves as opposed to servicing clients. "Referrals" is disingenuous because realtors spend so much time reminding clients of themselves - would this referral have occurred without that?

This seems like a strangely cynical or naive perspective that just reinforces the anti-realtor messaging you think is injected by commenters. >50% of buyer agents are engaged through either referrals or repeat business. Are you not intending to use referrals as a customer acquisition channel?

The math is that if the buyer Realtor convinces their buyer to bid a higher $, then they increase the probability that the buyer will get their bid accepted quickly.

My own realtor convinced me to bid a price that the seller accepted in 30 minutes for my home - immediately == high.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com