startup
yes, things will get worse
If you haven’t read the article, this is terrible news for people trying to buy a home. Touring homes and making offers was previously free for the prospective buyer and entirely paid out by a 3% commission paid out by the seller who was already making money off the sale.
Now, not only do landlords no longer have to pay real estate agents, this startup of theirs would force prospective buyers to pay flat fees per tour and per offer.
You don’t really understand how real estate works.
Yes the seller pays the 3% but you are paying the seller as the buyer. You could easily negotiate that 3% the seller traditionally pays to a buyers agent down in the offer as part of your offer. I’ve seen this done hundreds of times
This companies take on flat fee is shit, but not all flat fee ways of doing real estate are this stupid.
And your understanding is outdated based on a recently passed law
I literally work in the industry. There is no recently passed law.
There is a recent lawsuit settlement that only applies to members of NAR which is not all agents in the United States but instead only members of a certain trade group.
Stop talking out of your ass.
Edit: NAR = National Association of Realtors just in case that was also confusing for you.
And just to be extra clear I’ve spent the last few months working with different multiple listing services (both run my NAR members and not) to ensure they are in compliance with the settlement or that they are not open to the same liability that lead to the NAR settlement. I am as much of an expert in this area as you are going to find
We just bought our first house and the way our realtor explained it was something like this:
Yes, the new law says the buyer pays the buyer’s realtor fees (typically around 3% of the purchase price). Seller’s think they’re getting more money because, “hey! I don’t have to pay both my realtor and the buyer’s agent”. But the law doesn’t say the buyer must pay - it’s still negotiable. And if the seller won’t pay the buyer’s fee, nobody will show their house to potential buyers.
And this is exactly what the NAR said would happen if buyers’ agents’ commissions went away. Yes, the “standard fee” was anti-competitive, but it favored customers, not agents. All of the risk, all of the upfront costs, it was all on the agents. It’s like reverse insurance.
Agents were mostly individuals drawn in by the promise of large comissions, but it was a losing proposition. 90% of agents make less than minimum wage. Now that they have no incentive to do the work, the void creates an opportunity for predatory corporations to exploit a captive market.
I’m not defending the NAR or its anti-competitive practices. In fact, I’d argue that the way they atructured the settlement just created another vector for them to control the market and squeeze home buyers and sellers. They could have encouraged rate negotiations and MLS competition without eliminating the buyer’s broker commission and made it more obvious that it is negotiable. By removing commissions from the MLS entirely, they screwed agents and buyers at the same time.
Commission encourages both sides of agents to push for as many closings as they can in as short amount of time as they can. It does not favor the buyer or the seller.
Commissions encourage closings, yes, but buyers and sellers want closings, and ultimately the buyers and sellers are entirely in control of the closing. If the buyer or the seller refuses to sign on the dotted line, it is nearly impossible, and possibly career suicide, to collect any payment at all. And while I agree the NAR engaged in bad faith practices making commissions standard, they have always been negotiable. It’s like the NAR got caught with their thumb on the scale, so they threw out the scale and started charging entrance fees to the market instead.
Claiming the buyers and sellers are totally in control is a cop out when they’re relying on these experts’ opinions. Yes, they technically are in control.
And if you think this will trickle down to the buyers price, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Theres always been a big cry from non car enthusasts to just allow people to order cars direct from the manufacturer… like 1. The manufacturer wants the headache and 2. They would pass any savings onto the customer.
So… if people stop paying a rent-seeking middleman to buy and sell their goods, you don’t think this would affect prices?
Not as long as we live in a capitalist society.
Yeah… I’m pretty sure you don’t know what any of these words mean.
Those are all pretty basic words. Most people know them. I’m not sure what you are getting at.
Is it a nice bridge?
I’ve never seen it, but I hear it’s great.
How have you not seen your ow- oh… I get it now…
You’re some sort of middleman! Sure, I’m in.
I literally just had my account locked on Steam for making a joke about asking for a credit card number, so I’m gonna go ahead and end this here before I get banned from Lemmy.
Got it. Yeah, I’ll send you my bank account information in a private message since credit card numbers get people banned from the internet. If you prefer, I can instead fax you some cash.
Why does my fax machine say “cross cut”?
Oh, it’s much worse than that. The suit argued that property owners felt like it wasn’t fair that they had to pay a 3% commission to get their property sold, filed a suit, won, and now, they’re starting a service that forces the prospective buyer to pay up to $1,799 in additional fees just to tour homes and make offers, all of which was previously free for the buyer.
Yeah, that’s exactly my point. This won’t make anything cheaper. The people that set the price will continue to profit. All we did was move money from one pocket to another, but the pants are still on the same asshole.
Yes! I’ve been saying this for years. Agents do practically nothing! They absolutely do not deserve a percentage of your homes value for what they bring to the table. Their value is worth about 1000 bucks max.
Say it with me now: "I have never done this job, and I do not know what I am talking about. I sound just like every boomer criticizing others for making ‘too much’ for doing hard jobs that I don’t do and are already struggling to make ends meet.
For everybody’s information:
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My partner is a real estate agent who busts her ass looking up properties for rent and making listings on platforms to get the word out on them because people simply do not want to or do not know how to or do not know where to look for these kinds of things without them. She spends HOURS driving around town to tour these places with clients, many of whom want to see multiple in a day, all of which they expect her to find and line up for tours that they expect her to schedule with the property managers. Then, most of the time these scumlords will withhold documents, add fees, or argue for why certain repairs don’t need to be made before her clients move in, and she has to fight to fix all that.
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Real estate agents don’t get paid a percentage from their clients. They make a percentage commission from the landlord or seller. Why? Because these people want to rent their apartments out or want to sell their homes and either cannot or do not know how or have been failing to do so themselves. Sometimes, over a year. My partner is the reason those repairs get made to an otherwise sellable home sometimes because she and the client agree that the landlord is an asshat for not making them, and her client “will not agree to rent unless the repairs are made”.
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In this situation, the SELLER was complaining that they had to pay a 3% commission to a real estate agent to help them sell their house. This service now forces THE PROSPECTIVE BUYER OR RENTER to pay “$49 for each home tour and $199 for an offer prep session. If they want more hand-holding, they can cough up a flat fee of $1,799, which includes up to five home tours and two offer prep sessions, with additional services available on an à la carte basis” for services which were previously free to them.
So all in all, the world is worse for people trying to find a home thanks to all this just so people who were already going to turn a profit can make even more.
House tours are now is scan a qr code set an appointment on the phone and get a code to a digital lock while you tour a home that has security cameras in it. Driving all over town to show homes is boomer bro.
Yeah, buyers are about to find out how much work agents actually did on spec
Yea my agent did literally nothing when I bought my property. Bought the house from HUD they came and unlocked the door. Not justified to get a percentage of the value. I don’t give a fuck about having a house staged. I also hired an agent to sell my other property once, they also did nothing and I wound up selling the property myself for cash. I did their job for them. Luckily I was able to get out of the contract before selling. Sorry but your partner is massively over paid for the value that they bring to the table. They are worth about 1000 bucks and nothing more.
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It is kind of dumb… I lost out on a property because I didn’t have a Realtor… It is like a racket. If I’ve done the legwork and found the property I want then what purpose does a Realtor serve? I’m paying full cash.
My adblocker gave me a tracker alert when I tried to click the link. Anyone got a clean link by any chance or can paste the contents here? :o
TLDR; some property owner that got miffed about having to pay a real estate agent a 3% commission for helping them sell a house that they failed to sell on their own filed a lawsuit about it, won, and now, they’re starting a “service” which would instead force prospective buyers and renters who are probably already paying their life savings for a place to live “$49 for each home tour and $199 for an offer prep session. If they want more hand-holding, they can cough up a flat fee of $1,799, which includes up to five home tours and two offer prep sessions, with additional services available on an à la carte basis”.
Thank you hero!
