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Comment by danielweber | Hacker News Reader

If you get a lawyer for your house transactions, you will pay a flat fee of less than $1000 and still get the advice to always have it inspected.

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A lawyer? Geez, why a lawyer? They are highly qualified and expensive.

Hire a flat-rate agent/broker. They'll technically be your agent, but you do all the leg work.

Because you could hire a lawyer for a flat thousand bucks easily. Real estate agent is going to take 7 percent of the sale. So you get more qualified for way less money on most cases.

At least in my state, you have to hire a lawyer to do the transaction. They will make sure you did all the required steps, and charge a flat fee.

I pay less than $1000 for a lawyer and get 10x the value I get out of an agent for which I'd pay several thousands of dollars.

Here in North Carolina the buyers realtor fees are entirely paid by the seller so there's really no reason not to get one. Ours was really helpful in getting things lined up and providing checklists and support when we had questions.

If the seller stands to pay your agent 3% of the sale proceeds, the seller will typically be happy to reduce the price by 3% if you don't have an agent.

I just sold a condo in Minneapolis using a flat fee company -- fantastic experience and will never use a realtor again, save for maybe if looking internationally in a very unfamiliar area perhaps.

I just use flat-fee agent in Utah. $95. Same experience.

If you want an industry ripe for disruption, consumer real estate is HUGE. Got a couple start ups in my area trying to do that.

area where it concerns overhead due to law seems does seem ripe for disruption. But my concern is that this isn't a technical challenge, but rather political/legal one.

I mean that the buying/selling process is rather backward in technology and there's a lot of misunderstanding. The difficulties are less political and more inertial.

A primarily digital brokerage would be (is) a huge improvement.

This is generally not true. The seller of the home has a contract with the listing realtor. If there is no second realtor the listing realtor will usually get 5% or 5.5% instead of just 3%.

Depends. If that's the situation, you find a realtor who will sign and give you most all of their commission.

That is typical across the US.

The price is 6% higher than the actual value, so that the buying and selling realtors get their cut.

But if you don't have a buying realtor, any offer you make it looks 3% higher to the seller, and you can recoup most or all of that.

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