Realtors are outdated middlemen extracting wealth from everyone else.

They have successfully lobbied to put laws and regulations in place that keep them in the middle of transactions, extracting tens of thousands of dollars every time a house changes ownership.

They also run massive campaigns to convince people of their value. Prepare for astroturfing defense of realtors in this thread of people claiming their realtor "saved them money" by giving some trivial guidance, despite the fact that for every one instance of that in real life, there are 100 people who got told whatever they needed to hear to close the sale.