With 10 years experience in the real estate brokerage business I have witnessed the value of a good agent in the home buying/selling process. The number of thi

With 10 years experience in the real estate brokerage business I have witnessed the value of a good agent in the home buying/selling process. The number of things that can and do go wrong on the eve of a sale, are often things that a good agent with good vendor/contractor/mortgage relationships can fix so the deal can close. With tight lending standards post-2009 an agent with good mortgage broker relationships can get loans approved that would have otherwise fallen through. I have seen this a hundred times. 90% of agents are useless middlemen/women that want to collect a few commissions a year to supplement their income. A full time, capable agent/broker is like having a good lawyer on your side. Being a real estate agent/broker is not an easy job. It's extremely competitive, the margins on a brokerage are often very thin. It's a demanding 7 day per week job, and putting in a lot of work to get no payment is an ordinary occurrence. The MLS and the mandatory broker councils that one must belong to are another story. I have found them to be petty dictatorships at least 10 years behind technology wise. One MLS I have worked with has for over ten years had an internet explorer only web interface. The MLS API is a giant XML beast that is the most confusing API I have ever worked with. The MLS has great value, and the freshness and integrity of the data come at a large cost. I am not surprised that brokers and associations protect it the way that they do.