6% seller's fees. Good riddance.

Uncomfortable truth?

I thought was the job description.

 

There's a good video on tiktok (I hate it too) explaining the changes to come and it sounds like in the end nobody knows what effect it's going to bring. Will the 3% come off the sales price? Buyers aren't going to want to write a check to someone if they can't see the services they are really getting .I know a lot of lazy realtors who do the absolute bare minimum and still make a living. I wouldn't want to pay someone for that level of service. Other option is deal directly with the selling agent but their financial obligation is not to you if they are dual agency so why go that route too. I don't think the seller is going to end up with the extra 3% in their pocket

 

Technically not exactly true but not alway enforced. Depends on what’s listed on the buyers agreement with their agent. If the buyers agreement stated that the agent would get 3% and the seller was only providing 2%, the buyer could be responsible for the 1% difference. See #5 in this agreement https://images.kw.com/docs/1/4/7/14...___Exclusive_Buyer_Agency_Agreement___PDF.pdf

Another rule that I believe is changing is that buyers commission will no longer be allowed to be included in the MLS. Previously, if you had 2 similar houses and 1 had a buyers commission of 2% and another at 3%, some agents would steer their buyers more towards the 3% property.

 

Lawyers can do it, too. But when you have a house go on the market on a Friday and all offers are due by Sunday, be prepared to pay your lawyer for dropping everything they’re doing and drawing up a contract on the weekend.

 

FSBO

Once the internet made it easy to see the properties on the market, the days of the RE agent were numbered.

 

Same shit happened to us. We actually wanted to build a family in that house.

 

Disabuse yourselves of the notion that your RE agent
is on your side, they are on their own side. If you want
someone who is on your side, pay a RE consultant who
gets a pre-set fee that isn't tied to what a property sells
for or costs. Pay for knowledge and advice, not a salesman.

 

I'm pretty sure that the appraisal notice letter I'll be getting in a couple of weeks is going to start with a 9 if not a 1 then a comma.

Even if I paid my lawyer 1% instead of a realtor 6%, I'd be saving about 50 grand drawing up a contract to sell this place.

 

Or just fill out a standard real estate contract yourself, which is all a real estate agent does. It's nothing fancy and is easy to do.

 

That’s great that you’re able to do it yourself. Not everyone can or wants to.

 

We sold our last house about as cheaply as we could. We found a flat-fee firm that we paid only a couple hundred bucks to get it on the MLS to get it out to prospective buyers (this was 10 years ago before Realtor.com and FB Marketplace were as big as they are now.) We did all the photos and showings ourselves. When we closed we simply went to the title company and paid another couple hundred bucks just to do the paperwork. That was it. There will always be some title fees, and such with your municipality/county/state/etc.

Our second house we bought directly from the previous owner, she worked for an attorney and paid almost nothing in fees for the paperwork and transfer. It was a word of mouth deal so she didn't even have to advertise at all.

The RE market really is a racket, and the fees they try to get are obscene. I have an aunt who has been an RE agent in a high priced area and she has made a killing in the last 30 or so years. No way I was going to give someone almost 10 grand to do what I can do myself. I think as people keep finding more ways to do things without realtors, the market will continue to adjust.

 

As an attorney, I would never use an agent for a residential transaction. Flat fee MLS services like https://flatfeerealty.com/ are all you need because home values are so algorithm driven and easy to compute. Everything important is taken care of by the title company anyway. All of the real estate contracts are standardized and only include filling in a few blanks. It is far, far, far cheaper to have an attorney just review your offer than use an agent. Want help doing so, send me a DM.

 

I didn't even use attorney. Just paid appraisal guy $350 to tell me what house is worth and rest of paperwork done at title company.
I ain't giving 40-50k to agent, I can live 3 years with that money somewhere on the beach

 

That's a nice theory, but if you're buying a house for $500k and the fees are 5%, then $25k goes to RE agents. If you approached the homeowner to buy the house privately and split the difference I guarantee they'd happily sell it to you for $475k. At which point the house IS effectively $25k cheaper. And this doesn't take into consideration most people that are buying a house, are also selling a house. So if you sell your $400k house to upside to a $500k house you're also on the hook for $20k to sell your place. Why it's a commission based business is also beyond me. How is an $800k house more work than a $500k house to sell? Finally, when agents sell their own houses, their houses stay on the market far longer than their clients houses. Why? Because the agent would rather wait an extra few weeks and get another $25k, whereas for their clients they'd rather sell asap to get the commission. An extra $25k's worth of commission for the listing gagent is only about $600. Even less when you take into consideration the amount the agent has to pay to the company they work for.
I stand by my sentiment.

 

I notice the realtors in my area want you to list cheaper to move the houses.

I made my agent list out last house 25k higher than she wanted. She said I was nuts.

Had 3 full price offers the 1st day.

Spent all winter making that house nice, spotless, and turn key, and listed it in June when everyone's wife and kids want a pool. In Michigan you can sell a pool home but you get your premium dollar for it June-August

 

Just saying.....I am a licensed agent; I don't make my living off RE and maybe do 1-2 deals a year for people other than myself. But....just a quick story on why an agent IS valuable. A friend of a friend called me and asked me to look over her relatives local listing as she though it was listed to cheap. They were planning to list the house at 225 because that's what someone told them it was worth and they were fine with that. I was able to pull more recent comps and found the house was worth closer to 270. In this instance alone, I got the seller an extra 45 grand........she ended up paying me 6500 to make her another 38K profit.

I'd say my "Fee" was very well worth it. Most people, like 95% of the general public, is stupid and will be grossly taken advantage of without "professionals" who do x,y,z day in and day out. Just my two cents.

 

But did you really? If the home was listed too low, wouldn't there be a bidding war with multiple offers, all over the listing price? I mean, the market would ultimately dictate the true value of the home.

 

This depends how the contracts are written up. Sometimes it ends up that someone got a great, below market price home deal.

 

Yeah right
Why wouldn't the realtor try and get the most, and get a bigger commission.

 

Move three properties in the time you're wasting trying to get the most juice out of one property.

Pump your sales figures up to non-rookie levels and get more clients.