7 ms·
Wife's a real estate agent so I have some insight. Agents mainly do two things: 1. If selling they can put your house into MLS. 2. For buyers they can let yo
by wehadfun 10y ago
Wife's a real estate agent so I have some insight.
Agents mainly do two things:
1. If selling they can put your house into MLS.
2. For buyers they can let you into a house.
Being able to do these things requires NAR membership, a state license, and other fees and cost real estate agents thousands per year. Also driving meetings clients at houses takes gas and time. Also your 6% commisiion is paying for all the other people that the agent spent gas and time on who did not buy a house.
Would you be willing to advertise in the news paper that your house is for sale and leave the doors unlocked so that random people could check it out?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bluedevil2k 10y agoOn 2, buyers can be let into the home by the seller's agent.
- wehadfun 10y agoTrue a buyer could be let into a home by sellers agent and even use the sellers agent to purchase the home. Agents love this! Its called getting both ends of the deal. It doubles the agents commission. Does not benefit buyer at though and actually is a bad idea.
- rplst8 10y agoYeah, even with a buyers agent, the buyer doesn't get much. Both agents (if being paid out of the 6% commission) have a fiduciary responsibility to the seller. About the only thing a buyer gets out of the whole deal is a title search to make sure there are no outstanding liens on the property - and they have to pay for that themselves!
- mratzloff 10y agoIf that's all most agents are doing, that's worth maybe 0.5%.
- wehadfun 10y agoIts worth what agents are willing to do it for. If you cant find a real estate agent willing to help you sell your house for 0.5% then it is not worth it.
- flylib 10y agoOpendoor is already doing agentless open houses with access codes (smart locks) and cameras throughout the house where people can visit whenever they want without calling ahead, not that difficult
- rplst8 10y agoYeah someone needs to tell the real estate people their jobs aren't safe from the robot apocalypse either.
- lisper 10y agoThat seems to me to be fraught with all manner of peril. Suppose a burglar poses as a buyer under an assumed identity, and then robs the house while wearing a mask. What is the recourse?
- icebraining 10y agoApparently Opendoor literally buys (and fixes up) the house and then re-sells it, rather than simply arranging the transaction, so they're selling an empty house.
- lisper 10y agoAh, I see. That actually makes a lot of sense. But what if someone steals the appliances? That is actually a problem for new construction.
- disillusioned 10y agoBuyers have to go through an identity verification stage to gain access to the homes, including, I believe, the taking of a credit card. Not impossible to spoof, but far more frustrating than merely downloading an app, clicking "I agree" and getting the unlock code to burgle.
- doingmyting 10y agoI'm not sure I understand what's stopping the burglar today? 50 year old Aunt May with the bad hip who has been selling houses for 25 years? I'd also expect the person to be checked out ahead of time similar to Airbnb or other services.