I thought for sure realtors would get the gig-economy treatment during the rise of Uber and AirBnb; just a person to handle showings while the mega-corp drops prices slightly and collects huge profits. Not sure if I'm happy or sad that they persist.

But to me the craziest part of it, is that in my experience 90% of people don't comparison shop for a realtor, they just go with that person their friend used. Those social referrals are the vast majority of realtors' deal flow. Consider also that when realtors' make referrals among themselves, the receiving agent will typical give a 30% commission split back to the referrer. So what I'm getting at is, there's basically $10k+ value decisions being thrown around essentially at random, and without any metrics or qualifications.