the average commission paid to the buying and selling brokers was 5.4 percent of the price of a home in 2011, up from 5 percent in 2008. (The seller’s agent col

the average commission paid to the buying and selling brokers was 5.4 percent of the price of a home in 2011, up from 5 percent in 2008. (The seller’s agent collects the commission from the seller and then splits it evenly with the buyer’s agent.) That’s considerably higher than the median rate in markets abroad, where there may only be one agent involved in the transaction, such as the U.K. (a 1 percent to 2 percent fee), Germany (3 percent to 6 percent), Israel (4 percent), and the Netherlands (1.5 percent to 2 percent), according to a 2007 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. <snip> They found that there’s ... collusion in real estate that separates it from industries like stock trading and air travel. So the most "consumer-friendly" solution to this problem is obvious. Make the collusion illegal. Make it a LAW that buyers and sellers are not obligated to pay any agents any specific percent of anything. (6 percent is hard-coded into most real estate transaction paperwork, and never fully explained to consumers.) Draw consumers' attention to the fact that Realtors should be competing with each other based on their service, not coercing consumers into signing contracts that write their percent commission in stone. The problem is that consumers don't know these things should be negotiable. Collusion should always be illegal, but the lobbying forces of the NAR are pretty evil and powerful; it's going to be tough (but not impossible) to change.