Hacker News Reader

Comment by kumarm | Hacker News Reader

And they should go away. Local MLS's are fraud and add very little value to either buyer or seller collecting 6% of total value.

When I bought the house, My agent spent total of less than ten hours showing the houses and made 30K with 3% he collects. (He was even absent at final walk through vacationing)

I believe Real Estate Agents even got a law passed where you can't be a real estate agent unless you work for someone for year in California. Really? You can be a doctor and do surgery on Patients on your day 1 as a Doctor but you apparently being real estate agent requires some unknown skills.

View on HN

It is a fucking sham!

I'm about to make a big move, and it is absurd that the only value the agents I'm talking to are (that a user on Reddit can't provide by telling me about the area) providing is the MLS they have access to.

The 6% commission, you would think, would be a price subject to market forces, but due to collusion among realtors, its locked in. Why anti-trust isn't investigating? Lobbying, that's why.

The commission is subject to market forces. There are a number of agents in my area (South Bay) that will accept a $5,000 flat fee.

A good agent really shines when you get into "unusual" situations, by providing you with good advice when the way is not clear. If you buy and sell houses a few times you will see some of these situations.

When I bought my house, I didn’t use an agent at all. Luckily I had rented in the area for about 5 years prior, so I already new the area pretty well.

When I began talking pricing on the house, the FIRST thing out of the realtors mouth was “Since you aren’t using an agent we can knock $x off the price of the house” that was before and negotiating had started, and before I made any offer.

And to even sweeten the deal more, the selling realtor was the owner of the house I ended up buying, so there was no commission for the seller to add into the price really. Needless to say, after negotiating we got the house much cheaper than equivalent houses were selling for.

its only _locked_ in if you sign a contract with a realtor (which can actually be negotiated, shop around). if you do a 'for sale by owner' you have no such obligation. even if the other party tries to use an agent. the agent will often 'ask' if you offer a 3% buyers commission, which is, totally up to you. even that is negotiable at that point. the downside is, they have less motivation for showing your house. but both times that i did, i hired a real estate lawyer to get the contracts and such, but handled the 'showing' and negotiations myself. in a hot market, a good agent can earn their % in patience and marketing.

I don't know about your experience, but I've bought two houses and sold one.

In each case, having a real estate agent to act as my "agent" when negotiating with the buyer/seller proved to be valuable. He/she understands real home values and selling trends through experience, not through algorithms. He/she also can spot warning signs for a property, usually has plenty of good vendor contacts, and can guide a buyer or seller through fairly complicated process.

I would absolutely recommend hiring an agent for a first-time home buyer or seller.

However when it comes to just "finding" property to show you; I agree agents and the MLS are becoming obsolete. In fact the second house we bought we had picked out before hiring our agent. So I'm all for open listing and open data.

Isn't that the fundamental problem with percentage based compensation? It doesn't take that much more work to buy / sell a million dollar home vs. a $300k one, but the agent's income is vastly different.

I'm not a realtor but I'm not sure "It doesn't take that much more work to buy / sell a million dollar home vs. a $300k one" is true. I wouldn't be surprised if it involved pickier clientele with more difficult to accommodate hours, for one.

My issue is that you can also have picky clientele at $300k, but you don't get paid any more. Or for instance, compare a client who spends every night checking Zillow for the latest listings vs. one who relies on the agent for new listings. There may be some correlation between home price and effort, but there are other factors that often dwarf that, and those aren't priced in at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com