i live in a hot market (cambridge, ma) and recently sold my condo and simultaneously bought a single family home. i used a realtor, who took 4% of the purchase

i live in a hot market (cambridge, ma) and recently sold my condo and simultaneously bought a single family home. i used a realtor, who took 4% of the purchase price. In the end, it seemed like a pittance for the amount of work she did and value she added. the stakes are high, the time is tight, and sophisticated buyers and sellers have many tricks they can use to alter the price by tens of thousands of dollars - my realtor guided me past all of that. but more fundamentally, she marketed my home. That's really what they do. The Redfin listing is just the beginning. She told me what work I had to do on the place, how to "stage" the unit to make it look bigger, and when to sell (very important). when i started getting offers in, she helped me filter out the ones who were just going to dick with me on price post-offer, when my leverage had plummeted. All while she was making me a savvy buyer of another place at the same time. Wow! I thought she was underpaid.