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Comment by danielnaab | Hacker News Reader

It seems the value of this is highly dependent on the local market. A 2% commission on a $300k home is comparably priced at $6000 (and commission rates are negotiable), but a local agent will provide a lot of service difficult for a web app to compete with.

I can see the value in a market where seven figure homes are the norm, though. Most buyers don't want to negotiate a good flat rate with an agent. On the other hand, I bought without an agent and didn't feel too out of sorts during the process.

As a suggestion for the site: talk up the value the service provides over and above sending the offer letter. To me, that's where the value would lie.

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Point taken, thank you!

We recognize that our pricing makes less sense outside of California but we're hoping to operationalize it here and make it really efficient before scaling to other markets where the fee will be lower.

One misconception is that people think when they directly negotiate with a seller's agent that they aren't paying the full commission. In fact, when the house is priced, 5-6% commission is set aside for the agents. If you go in without a buyer agent, the seller agent takes the full commission (this is called dual agency and it's financially ideal for them).

Will you be a licensed brokerage in these "other markets"?

Is 100% dual agency the norm? The industry definitely seems pretty opaque in regards to these issues. In my circumstance, the seller agent's contract stipulated that the agent earned 50% the buyer agent's commission for buyers lacking an agent. That worked well for me, as the seller had lower commissions and her agent's interests were also aligned with me. But I admit that going into the transaction, I had assumed there would be no commission for my half of the transaction.

in nyc, i know that dual agency is the norm. you see sellers' brokers mildly sabotaging offers from buyers' brokers sometimes for this reason. agencies like Corcoran have built very tidy businesses by being sellers' brokers and buyers' brokers at the same time, and act that way whether there is any actual buyer's broker relationship at all.

Buying an apartment in New York is actually one of the things that spurred us to start the company. My wife and I wanted to buy an apartment in New York, but by the time we had made our decision, the seller's agent we had been working with was replaced with a new agent by the buyer. The new seller's agent did not want to share the commission and made it very difficult for us to complete the transaction (even though this is illegal). More transparency and fewer big personalities is what we want to bring to the market with our service.

The norm in California is for both the buyer and seller to be represented by their own agents. About 10% of transactions in California are dual agency.

We take the full buyer's commission and refund it back to the buyer at close minus our fee.

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