As an agent - it's super interesting seeing all the responses. I tried reading through the majority but it all boils down to a few things.

10% of agents do 90% of the work

The people who had bad experiences or think agents don't do anything probably dealt with someone that just flat out sucked. People don't know ALL of the tasks involved and certain SKILLS it takes when trying to help a buyer win an offer. I had an $18k and $20k OVER asking offer submitted last week with no inspection/quick close and still got beat out! Other times, we actually make out and get a home under contract.

The moral of the story, lots of FIRST TIME home buyers will suffer unfortunately. The process is very simple if explained like you are talking to a 5-yr old but very CONFUSING if you have not done it before. I became an agent because the ones I've used were not helping nor didn't help me understand anything. I go over the entire process and keep my buyers informed every step of the way. I get feedback weekly on how glad someone is because I broke the whole transaction down in a way that makes sense.

Like someone mentioned, homes aren't $30-$40k anymore and I agree, sometimes agents make a huge chunk for the time put in. BUT - all these people who think agents do nothing forget about the countless hours spent driving and researching for clients that never buy, or end up getting something passed down to them etc.

I've had transaction where I showed 20-30 homes and make $700 bucks

And also some where I showed 2 and made $10k

Buyer agents are taking a slight L, but buyers who aren't 40-50+ yrs old with experience are unfortunately taking an L in an already tough market.

If you feel competent enough and want to do all the leg work, save money & don't use an agent, totally fine. You don't have to go around talking trash about agents as a whole though. Reminds me of girls from high school who always cry about toxic relationships they got into themselves willingly "all guy are the same" lol.. right.

I care about finding someone a home they will love - it's a HUGE step in life & I was in their shoes 2 years ago. Listings sell themselves in this market, usually.

Thats already happening in some locations. I recently went through the listing process and was offered a 2% commission that I would pay on the sale to the listing agent. I would pay nothing to the buyers agent. Trouble is would buying agents show the property to their clients.
It's going to be interesting to follow how this shakes out.

If buyers are flush with cash from selling their own home first or around the time of the move, then I can see them going out of pocket to pay their buying agent. But first time buyers? Hell no. They're cash poor. And even if they weren't a lot of them would try to DIY it.

eh, good realtors know they are means to a key, to see a house. bad ones think they are more than that.

mostly the entire real estate market is one scam after another, so im ok with knocking agents down a peg, next lets look at all the shady **** in the mortgage industry and clean house in that industry, cause god, is it a scam.

I think this is all screwed up. Keep the old system and has and will work for a long time. People what to predict come sell or buy time. Buyer will be pissed if they have to tack on a 2-3% of the entire fee just to get an agent to return phone calls. What agent in their right mind will take a client to see a house if they do not agree to pay the final fees if the sales stick or will they be straight enough to not jump from agent to agent just to find the right house. Makes it super hard to by a buyer's agent. Stupid law.

I have been saying this all along, and appreciate my agent. While I understand the selling or buying process, one call and she does it all. Our houses sells it selves within hour or a day or two but we stage open houses two weeks in a roll to generate interest to "real" buyers. I am hands off after our first conversation. Sometime we call our staging people sometimes she does it and we reimburse her. Simple and painless. She does cross reference their funding and that's really it. Talk about easy money but it IS money well spent imo.

There's a big difference between an Agent who sells houses to feed his/her family and an Agent who does it as a side job between tennis lunches and kids soccer.

Id be happy to pay them a reasonable rate per hour… the % stuff though i think id be difficult to convince.

The whole point for selling or sales is to make good commission. If paid by the hour, then why not just joint a bunch of lazy city workers:). Not not really kidding. I had to deal with one all morning at building and safety today.

Exactly, the fallout that we will see is corporations taking over residential homes, and the BS the solution, offering to give 1st time home buyers $25,000, the result be be like when Clinton pushed given loans to people who couldn't afford them, the traitor obama, while just a attorney for a so called social justice, suing to force banks to give loser loans and we saw the results of that failed experiment in 2008. Like Last time, when the banks were given money to help the homeowners, only to see them use it to buy the properties back for themselves at the public auctions. I saw this 1st hand, and watched homes get bid over what much more desirable properties on the same street sold for. They are setting the stage for that again, to cut out the independent contractors and for corporations to buy the homes when people who can't and have no business buying a house, start losing them . Bottom line, it is about control

I have had a lot of talks with a good friend that is a real estate agent and want to sell one of my properties. He has a hard time answering this question.
Lets say ten years ago the house was worth $1,000,000 and I'm going to pay 60K for him to sell it. Five years ago 2 million and 120K in fees. Today it worth 3 million and he want 180K in fees. Mean while I have been paying a mortgage, property taxes and upkeep for ten years. What additional work will he be doing that he would not have to have done ten years ago that warrants an additional $120,000.00 in fees?

Million dollar is median house price in my county. So the very motivated and hard working agents get $30k each for a few hours work. Median. 4m house they each get $120k. And you think thats reasonable? Because clients are so demanding!

Maybe they should try waiting tables and learn the value of a dollar. Yeah write me up an invoice of hours worked and then youll get your money.

I hope they all go broke or find some way to add real value to society. Mostly incompetant vampires.

incompetent

I know all about real estate pricing. See where I am from. Invoice for, I give you a day's worth, to sell you a 2 mil house? What's next, complain about pro ball players, or should you complain about hospitals charging too much for an extended stay. Maybe a GT3 is just too much since they can produce one in a day? Why should high end restaurant charge you 80-100 per person instead, just pay what they pay the cooks and add couple more minutes for their tips and make that your payment on your meal? If you think they will even talk to you as a buyer without an agent, think again.

My agent and I agree that if some buyer without an agent or tries to buy any or our houses on his own, we will just not return their calls or would counter offer. They are usually cheap and trouble is coming. Weed them out early to avoid headaches. Now with that said, not all agents are worth a damn. Just a few.

Excellent point. I think the amount of work put in by many agents is not on par with what they get paid. They take pictures, write up a boiler plate description and list it on MLS. Then wait for a buyer.

Don't they traditionally split the $30k with their broker? Four way split for the $60K.

If you believe the fees are too high than sell it yourself.

there is always this handwaving about real estate, all this supposedly invisible labor to both the buyers and the sellers agents claim they do.

i dont buy it.

like if the buyers and sellers dont recognize it as work, its not, and therefore shouldnt be paid. in any other job this is normal. for some reason there is always the hand waving "oh its so much work, you just dont see it" huh? if i dont see it, as both a buyer and a seller, then i dont care. do it on your own time.

That realtor's cost of doing business has skyrocketed too. Everything he touches is far more expensive than it was 10 yrs. ago - gas for the car he drives to showings, health insurance, licensing, MLS stuff, office rent and on and on. His personal rate of inflation may not track that of real estate, but it's gotten plenty more expensive for him too.

My commission levels for insurance sales have not increased and probably never will. But because I've gotten a lot better and more efficient at my job, I make a lot more money now than when I started. I suppose increases in insurance premiums will make me more money in the future. But until that happens, I have to get leaner and more efficient every year to make more money to keep up with taxes and inflation.

When I sold my parent's house to close their estate, I put a sign in the yard "For sale by Owner" My wife was sure I needed an agent. She had one agent come look at the house and they recommended a complete rebuild of the bathroom and kitchen. So they wanted me to spend many tens of thousands of dollars just to sell it.

One friend agent I knew, I agreed to let him show it, and if he found a buyer, he got the commission. In the end a single dad with two kids bought it from my sign out front. He just loved the ping and green bathroom, and the kitchen layout as is. I sold him the house after the inspection, as is. The house was in good shape, and passed inspection.

I paid my agent friend a flat fee of $1,000 to use his closing company, and do the contracts. There are lots of things needed for selling a property that I had no way to know about. The tax stamps and multiple disclosures, and contracts. Just to buy or sell a property requires signing page after page 20+ times.