Are real estate agents a dying breed? (2019)

Much like car dealerships, they've legislated themselves into permanence (state depending in USA). It'll take quite a bit of court cases to win your rights back

It always seemed such a strangely constrained model. Their product range is restricted to houses and maybe condos, boxed into a specific geographic constraints (whichever regional MLS they're part of).

This seems like it's intentionally hobbling your reach for some customers:

* A house isn't right for everyone, due to finances, preferred location, whatever. Why not take your agency's understanding of neighbourhoods and also serve as a high-powered apartment referral service? I also don't know if they handle manufactured houses, which is again putting viable choices off the table.

* Anyone shopping at the border of your MLS territory. Yeah, there are 300 houses perfect for the customer's needs right across the county line, but there's no way for you to sell them without getting into a standoff. On the flip side, it also means you only have access to customers fairly late in the move process-- once you've decided "I'm moving to Gary, Indiana and will find a house when I get there."

A true national real-estate firm could do some amazing integrated services. Especially with the growth of "work-anywhere-there's-broadband" remote work, you could meet the customer at the "I want to leave San Francisco; where can I go that has good schools, municipal broadband, and four-bedroom homes on a $350,000 budget" phase of the process. Existing homeowners could orchestrate selling their old house and finding a new one through a single firm, even if they're doing a cross-country move. They'd also have the market presence to put price pressure on auxillary services (inspectors, title insurance firms, short-term investments to hold sale proceeds)

I see no evidence this is true in Australia. Ref: Purplebricks in Australia

Quite a lot of this doesn't apply in countries other than the US. Here in the UK, estate agents are employees, not contractors.

They're still awful though.

They’ve got low overhead costs. One or two sales a year (in a popular Western metropolitan) can cover their COL.