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Comment by ejb999 | Hacker News Reader

I agree - especially for the last few years, when in order to sell a house all you had to do was put in on the market - and then get 10-15-20 offers at or above listing price - no agent deserves a 6% commission for simply getting something listed on zillow or MLS where in recent years, the houses just sold themselves.

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> no agent deserves a 6% commission for simply getting something listed on zillow or MLS

Typically 3% is seller agent commission and 3% is buyer agent commission - although in the paperwork it's most likely 6% to the seller's agent and the seller's agent offers 3% to the buyer's agent.

Although 5% total / 2.5% to each realtor is becoming a bit more popular as of recent, based on the listing I browse.

Remember there’s no professional responsibility for realtors, so they do shady shit like shop the house internally to keep the full 6%.

I encourage you to report any behavior you believe to be illegal or unethical to both your local realtor association as well as your state agency. That’s why those organizations exist and we are all better if people are held to professional standards.

Is there a practical way to diligence theoretically unethical behavior?

Parsing the question as:

- a broker with a client who is selling

- to pitch buying to another broker who has a client who is buying

- and for the brokers to work for the same company

I don't think so? It sounds obviously ethical

More like the selling realtor “forgetting” to take a call from a competing buyers agent and keeping it in-house. It happens all of the time and cost the sellers money.

There’s also many scenarios where real estate folks steer certain ethnicities or religious practitioners away from some areas.

As said earlier, any and all discrimination is illegal/unethical and there are checks in place to prevent it from proliferating. Anyone who is a victim can report a HUD fair housing complaint form, contact their local state's office of fair housing, or contact their local Association of REALTORS® to report an ethics violation.

And people do report:

> The most important finding of this report is that the number of housing discrimination complaints increased significantly in 2021, despite the fact there were fewer agencies reporting complaint data. There were 31,216 housing complaints in 2021, an 8.7 percent increase over the number of complaints filed in 2020. At the same time, there were seven fewer agencies that reported data in 2021 than in 2020. Had all fair housing agencies been able to submit their data, undoubtedly the number of reported fair housing complaints would have been even higher.

https://nationalfairhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2...

You choose the buyers agent.

I don't understand why people don't negotiate more on this. I paid 3.5% total commission (1.5% listing and 2% buyer agent) on the last 2 homes I sold. One in 2012 and one earlier this year. In both cases the homes sold quickly and above asking.

My understanding is that in some markets if you try to negotiate anything less that 6% you're just blacklisted. They lock arms and no one will accept it.

Do you know anyone this has actually happened to? Quite honestly it sounds more like fud spread by realtors.

That’s only true if you are in a competitive market. There is a whole swath of land in flyover country and rural America where it can take awhile to sell a house.

Outside cities, yes, but there also aren't many houses there.

In flyover country, in the cities, it's been "OMG, this house just came on the market four hours ago... quick, send a full offer! Damnit, they already sold it for $20k over asking, again?!?!" for years, only letting up recently.

[EDIT] And I don't just mean like Chicago and Minneapolis, either—any metro area a million or larger, it's probably been like that, and even in some of the smaller ones.

Is that still the case? I feel like rural markets have really boomed in the last few years. At least I'm seeing that in the southeast. Maybe "flyover country" is different.

Rural America I mean rural GA, FL, AL, MS.

I mean yes, it's sort of tautological that if you are trying to sell a home in a place very few people want to live, it might be (but isn't by definition!) harder to sell than someplace where a lot of people want to live.

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