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Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

Author here.

For me, the value of the broker was just someone to guide me through the whole process because I'd never done it before. It was good to have someone whose interests were pretty aligned with mine and who answered questions quickly and thoroughly without me having to pay by the hour.

Another big part of the value was finding the buyer, as I probably couldn't do that on my own. I could have thrown a hail mary and listed the business for sale on the TinyPilot website and my blog, but the person who ultimately acquired the business definitely wouldn't have found me that way.

Having gone through it, I would consider foregoing a broker in the future if I had some way of finding my own buyer, but I have no regrets about the broker for this sale.

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I used to listen to the Quiet Light podcast. One thing that the Quiet Light founder mentioned a couple times is they are always working on dealflow, lining up buyers and sellers sometimes years in advance of an actual sale.

In what way were their interests aligned with yours? (this is not a snarky question. usually in real estate their interest is to make the deal happen asap, which doesn't align fully with your interests)

Presumably the broker has a fixed % commission, so the broker is definitely incentivized to seek a larger deal.

GP may be referring to freakonomics. One of the things the authors point out is that it can actually be better for real estate brokers to crank out lots of sales rather than spend a lot of effort finding good deals for the seller.

I was referring to common sense :)

In real estate brokers typically get around 2.5%, so even if they find a buyer that is ready to pay 100K more, it's only $2500 extra (so probably $1500 after taxes). It's not a lot of money esp if they can invest that time and energy in parallelizing other deals. Time is of the essence in such transactions.

And then of course a Buyer side agent's incentives are aligned exactly opposite to the buyer, but even if they would want to push for an early transaction above anything else.

The deal happening ASAP was aligned with my interests in this case. I would have taken a lower sale price for a faster close.

But even aside from that, they make more money the larger the deal, so they work to get a good price. They also feel the pain if the deal falls through, so they have incentive to keep the deal alive and both sides happy.

The broker isn't perfectly aligned with me, but of everyone else involved like lawyers, accountants, and the buyer, the broker is by far the most aligned with my interests.

Thanks for your reply!

> it was good to have someone whose interests were pretty aligned with mine and who answered questions quickly and thoroughly without me having to pay by the hour.

Perhaps so, but you can buy a lot of legal hours with $89,000...

The marketplace connection seems the part that gives the most value.

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