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Comment by evantbyrne | Hacker News Reader

Prior to the changes which only went into place in August, agents were colluding to keep fees artificially high. Buyers' agents would actually hide listings that promised less than what they wanted and all of that information was hidden from buyers until the buy/sell agreement. It is way too early to say exactly what the impact will be, but as an anecdote my agent accepted 2% on the home I just closed on. My prediction is fees will decrease significantly, because it just doesn't make financial sense to pay agents as much as people have been. Also, agents wouldn't have been colluding to the extent they had been if they believed a free market was good for their bottom lines.

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Some fees will drop, there will definitely be an H&R Block version of agents.

Other agents will have such demand, their fees will remain high.

It’s not clear to me as a potential buyer that I want to go with the commodity, especially in quirky areas like TICs in San Francisco. We’re in for an interesting ride, best of luck to this team!

>agents were colluding to keep fees artificially high

Sitzer-Burnett involved a very narrow definition of collusion... essentially one Kansas City MLS had a mandatory input field for a seller-paid buyer commission. Realizing the risk of copycat lawsuits, the NAR got involved and decided to settle. Both Sitzer and Burnett should have gone after their own agents rather than turning this into a national issue.

>My prediction is fees will decrease significantly

And my prediction as an agent is somewhere between "business as usual" and "buyers are going to pay more out of pocket and will find it harder to buy homes." Further - many buyers will opt to not use an agent and I'm already making popcorn waiting to see what a clusterfuck that will be as buyers and sellers sue each other into oblivion.

The mandatory "Buyer Broker Commission Rule" was in the NAR Handbook, which was binding for MLSs. Moehrl vs NAR went after twenty offending MLSs and the four largest national real estate broker franchisors in America. They got caught red handed price fixing they had no choice but to settle.

Realtor services are valuable, but they aren't worth 6% of a person's largest investment. On the median home that's $24k, which is considerably more than other professional services related to buying a home.

I just sold a house. In August I signed some paperwork saying we would offer 2.5/2.5 to buyer and seller, just verbally. The seller agent heavily pushed this, saying that we don’t want to work with an attorney and put everything at risk; he wants to work in his network.

All the buyer offers we received were also expecting 2.5%.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah buyer's agent comp will be the norm for the interim on listings. However, people are already listing without buyer's comp or like in my instance lower than usual comp, and as time goes on I would expect to see more buyers going the attorney route and factoring that they are saving sellers a few percent into the offer.

At the end of the day, it's not your agent's job to decide which agents he will work with, it is to sell your home and leave as much money in your pocket without exposing you to unnecessary risk. You'll still have the title insurance, the inspections, and the buy/sell agreement, so what is his problem with someone coming to the table without an agent if their paperwork is in order? To me, him insisting to only "work within his network" sounds like a huge red flag.

Agreed that it’s a red flag, but at this point we weren’t super interested in switching things up. Which is my point- if you’re not confident that your house will basically sell itself (and we weren’t, the house had been sitting on the market) then you’re vulnerable to scare tactics. It’s the same as before, except that commission is offered over text instead of being on MLS.

Not having an agent works great here in EU, you just hire an engineer to inspect the home to find any issues and then the bank reviews some of it as well (if you are getting a mortgage) and finally you get the sale contract notarized by the banks laziest employee and done. Not sure what an agent will help with these days where everything is online.

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