To address your latter point, realtors absolutely bring value to a transaction. The world isn’t quite as black or white. What is up for debate and highly cont

To address your latter point, realtors absolutely bring value to a transaction. The world isn’t quite as black or white. What is up for debate and highly contested is whether the commissions collected are commensurate with that value. The old pre-internet world had deep informational asymmetry via the MLS. Realtors were magical in that they could bring forth magical houses at magical price points and the commissions “felt” like value. And more than being a facilitator, the realtor also played part as pseudo-therapist and mind reader reading situational cues to find good fits for their clients. However, I’d argue that several things have sullied the relationship over time. 1. The low-ish barrier to entry to become a realtor. Made for a lot of professionals that could coast on value adding activities. So the client who feels that they would have never found or sold their dream property or deal has become less and less so. 2. The democratization of information via the internet has pushed the labor of searching for properties to the client. 3. The democratization of loan broker services via the internet have reduced what a seasoned buyer would have to go through to obtain financing. So this has reduced the realtor from value adder along the whole process to merely door opening facilitator. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, it’s not going back, but the question is, is the value offered today, still commensurate with percentages charged as Realestate prices continually go up?