Realty Bites
From Slate:
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," a character in a Shakespeare play famously remarks. I have a different suggestion: Make it realtors.I've never bought a house, or anything that requires a mortgage (or anything with a monthly payment over $300, for that matter), but I've always wondered why realtors are involved at all, especially at such a premium. This article says that the average realtor sells 6 houses per year—6!—and, based on the figures in the article, those 6 houses can net the realtor about $150,000 in commissions! That's crazy.
posted by Cyraxote at 11:43 PM
1 Comments:
That's because the shear amount of paperwork, rules (many quite obscure) and forms to buy or sell a home (especially in Maryland) are ridiculous. There's no real guidance available for free, and, most often, buyers don't want the hassle of dealing with a personal seller without the benefit and experience of a professional real estate agent.
The amount agents charge is beginning to change, though. When my house was sold, the agent's fee was 3%. That price was pretty standard across the board.
Now you see a lot of brokers only charging 1.5% or even 1%. Of course, that being said, that's still $2,000 on a $200,000 home, for about 4 hours work.
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