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Comment by warvair | Hacker News Reader

Why doesn't anyone mention real estate agents/agencies when talking about housing prices? When I bought my first home in the early 90s it seemed like a confidence game back then and it's only gotten worse since. What I'm basically talking about is everyone in the business of selling homes, including "your" agent gaslighting you into thinking that home prices will always go up. "You should by this now. You can't lose money. This is a great investment." In recent years it's been "You should offer 20% over asking." It used to make some sense that prices would generally go up for well built/maintained homes in good neighborhoods but that nod to sanity went out the door when AirBnB came along.

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So they take 6%. That doesn't explain why the price is persistently high in many regions. Do you think stocks would be higher if brokers took a 6% commission?

If you look the regions with the highest prices often have geographical and political barriers to build more supply. NYC, LA, SF, MI and Seattle.

Not Dallas, Austin, Chicago etc.

Agents want to close a sale. Typically, that is aligned with the interests of buyers and sellers.

We've found that agents are most useful when we're driving them towards the outcome that _we_ want. That means two things:

* When possible, do our own market research. Form an opinion then compare that to the agent's opinion.

* Ask questions like "what do you typically see", "how have other people handled X", etc, etc. Instead of having your agent simply tell you what to do, leverage their knowledge to inform your opinion.

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With that being said, I've interacted seem to think they can magically make a house worth more than the market values it.

Re: ask questions

Agents have no duty to be honest, do non anecdotal research. they have every incentive to get a client and close a deal (at the highest price that will close)

Yes, the simplicity of agent incentives is what make them so easy and useful to work with.

They are not finical advisors or investment experts. They simply find a price that will close a deal, and ensure that it closes swiftly. If you want that, perfect.

A good agent will tell you what bid would likely win.

Real estate agents didn’t invent Airbnb.

Like it or not, agents serve an important role in real estate transactions by helping guide homebuyers through an incredibly complicated process. And it’s totally possible to be your own buying agent and save money if you’re willing to put in the work.

“You should offer 20% above asking” is the agent giving you advice on how to win the deal, and a good agent will know when offer above or when to come in slightly under and see how open the seller is to negotiating. The agent doesn’t get paid until you buy the property, so they’re motivated to put you in the best position to buy.

> And it’s totally possible to be your own buying agent and save money if you’re willing to put in the work.

This is rarely true. The seller has negotiated and agreed to a commission with their agent, and that is getting paid regardless of whether the buyer is represented or not. Perhaps you can negotiate a purchase price low enough that the seller's agent fee is the seller's problem, but only in a buyer's market (which currently does not exist in any major market I'm aware of). The only time it makes sense to not use an agent is if you're confident you can market and close a transaction yourself selling your own property.

It's really unfortunate that there is a 3-6% drag on real estate transactions from agent and brokerage commissions, but various attempts to disrupt this model and drive down the cost have not been successful.

A friend of mine just represented himself in a transaction in a hot market. Typically, the seller cuts 6% which gets split between the buying agent and selling agent. What he did was negotiate that down to 3% to the selling agent and knock another 2% off of the final price.

> It’s really unfortunate that there is a 3-6% drag on real estate transactions

That’s because dealing with real estate is very difficult and tedious, as we’ve seen companies try and fail to disrupt this system.

I did something similar when I bought my place. Negotiated the 2.5% buyers fee to go towards closing cost. Paid for all the closing costs and my mortgage guy baked in like 4 months worth of property taxes into it to soak it all up.

This was not my experience. Our agent walked us through the assumptions under which buying a home would make financial sense (e.g. years in home, projected rate of increase in home prices, etc) and he made it absolutely clear we could lose money depending on timing. Ultimately we decided to buy because we believe LA is a market where demand will outstrip supply for the foreseeable future (and prop 13 while not great policy for society will personally benefit us).

Pick a better agent and stand your ground. You're making arguably the biggest decision/purchase of your life (along with who to marry and whether to have kids or not). Don't let some schmuck with a bunch of fake trophies who you've met 1 hour ago have ANY control over your offers. They advise only, and handle the paperwork, period.

RE agents have 0 power over you when Zillow and Redfin have 99% of the same data that the agents have.

There are checks and balances built in. For example, if you offer too much money, and the appraisal comes back and says it's not worth that much money, then your loan will not cover it and you will be on the hook to cover the difference.

Only in instances of fraud, at least effectively. Appraisals defer heavily to "this person is willing to pay $X to this unrelated person for this exact house".

If they can find someone paying more for a nicer house and someone paying less for a worse house you are likely going to be in the clear.

Technically they are supposed to adjust to get your home value from comparables but the magic "market adjustment" means that they can basically always do that.

Read Freakonomics

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