US home sale fees set to fall after real estate group settles lawsuits
ft.com
ft.com
Today, websites, digital photos, AI, zoom meetings, and the Internet in general have made many of these tasks obsolete. You can connect with buyers, find inspectors, and get approved for financing on your phone. I can search for a house with a few clicks and instantly be connected to a realtor for the seller. It's incredible, the throughout for a realtor can be immense.
That's not to say it's easy. It's still competitive and difficult to step up in that industry. But all these efficiency gains in automation certainly aren't reflected in realty fees somehow.
Uh, houses still need pictures taken, virtual tours and drone shots are a thing now, house needs to be staged, signs are still put up, publishing to the MLS isn’t instant (or no effort), you still meet clients in person, open houses need to be advertised and staffed, you’re at the closing, and you negotiate with other agents/clients.
I don’t see automation as making anything above obsolete.
Finding a house is a little easier but you still have to take your clients on showings and negotiate with the other agent/client. I’ve seen clients buy the first house they see and some see close to a hundred and never buy.
And for both sides you have to deal with emotional parties, who have either never gone through this process or do it once a decade at best if not longer, and know nothing about the industry on the whole. The _general public_. Even if you are in a HCOL area specializing in more expensive houses you will still deal with lunatics.
And I’ll agree there are good and bad agents. If your agent isn’t doing everything and/or more of what I listed above then you have a bad agent.
I don’t understand why some people pick a realtor at random (or through a sponsored ad) then go on to say “all realtors suck”, yeah and if you go on upwork and hire the cheapest or first result you’ll have a bad time as well.
Can some people do it all themselves? Sure, if your time is worth nothing or you’re ok with doing a subpar job. Will prices come down? For some people, largely the same people who sell their house to websites for under market value and think they got a deal. I predict we have agents that charge more than now in some cases and represent a more premium end of service. Giving up an extra percent doesn’t matter if the agent is able to make you more than that with the knowledge and system they have.
On a million dollar house, 3% is 30K. That’s a rounding error to offers/counters. Even on a 200K house 3% is 9K. A staged house with good pictures. priced correctly, and can swing a house value for more than 9K easy. Even doubling those numbers (as it’s done now) is far from crazy for the value a good agent provides.
If you disagree, what’s a reliable way to identify the great agents?
It’s not easy, I won’t lie to you, you aren’t going to find a perfect filter online. You can read reviews to narrow it down but you’ll need to talk to them most likely. Just avoid any of the sponsored, “recommended”, paid ads. Zillow, for example, is only showing you agents that paid for the privilege.
The charlatans are often the ones advertising the best “deal” to customers. It’s a race to the bottom with some of the scummiest people who only come out of the woodwork when the market is booming and they can attract customers and make money on the quality side and burn bridges with their clients and other agents (these are often incompetent people) but who cares? You’re not in it for repeat business, you’re just trying to move houses ASAP. And yeah, these people suck but they exist in every industry/job I’ve had/seen close up.
Some more discussion:
Motor vehicle departments are already moving to this.
No reason it can't work for more expensive assets - especially with centralized authorities doing the signing.
Yes. Changing databases doesn’t change anything. The person who holds the digital token may have obtained it fraudulently, or someone else before them in the chain.
What you might be suggesting is a centralised property record. Most countries have this. But that comes with other yradeoffs.
It's a fraction of the interest I will pay on a relatively small loan, so I can't say I was real animated about it, but you are just asserting that there is a lot of risk in the average transaction.
Likely the previous title policy (and now yours) specify that they only provide coverage as long as the policyholder themselves owns the property. Otherwise your lender could be mostly satisfied by a warranty deed from your mother ('s estate). That's the hook that makes it into a racket of perpetually leeching off every transaction rather than a one time expense to perform legitimate diligence.