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The problem is that there is too much bureaucracy involved in buying a house. You can't get around the real estate laws the way Uber gets around taxi regulation
by Apreche 14y ago
The problem is that there is too much bureaucracy involved in buying a house. You can't get around the real estate laws the way Uber gets around taxi regulations. Buyers and sellers don't know how to buy or sell a house, as most of them do it very few times in their lives. Real estate agents do it every day. If you want to make real estate as easy as eBay, you have to change the laws.
- mooreds 14y agoDisclaimer--I work as a software dev for a real estate brokerage. That said, I've spent some time thinking about whether just changing the laws would have an impact. I think the issue is bigger than this. I think that there are lots of marketplaces have sprung up via the internet, but as far as I know, the significant ones all offer products that have one of these characteristics: * the consumer buys them often [for some definition of often] (airplane tickets) * the product is fungible (books, cars) * the product is relatively cheap (stuff sold on ebay, amazon) All of these characteristics lower the risk of purchase. Housing has none of these characteristics. And I don't know how it could, short of a real manufacturing revolution or more houses built out of shipping containers.
- tantalor 14y agoWouldn't it be a lot cheaper to hire a real estate attorney to handle the tricky bits than a real estate agent? Speculating, the agent knows the laws, but also pays some of her commission to an attorney who does the real work. The agent is a middle man.