How are all the realtors making money these days?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They charge you for recommending their contractors and stager. If they use their own furniture for (possibly unnecessary) staging, you pay for that.

+1 Real estate is a very shady industry with kickbacks to the realtor for everything: stagers, contractors to fix up your place to sell, contractors the buyer uses to update a home after it sells, title company, inspectors, etc. If your realtor recommends someone, then the realtor is almost certainly receiving a kickback for your business.

[Anonymous]

My terrible realtor only has one house sold on his website...mine.The sale was a year ago

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They charge you for recommending their contractors and stager. If they use their own furniture for (possibly unnecessary) staging, you pay for that.

+1 Real estate is a very shady industry with kickbacks to the realtor for everything: stagers, contractors to fix up your place to sell, contractors the buyer uses to update a home after it sells, title company, inspectors, etc. If your realtor recommends someone, then the realtor is almost certainly receiving a kickback for your business.

That's such bullshit and yes I'm a realtor. Selling houses for almost twenty years and I have never received a kickback for anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They charge you for recommending their contractors and stager. If they use their own furniture for (possibly unnecessary) staging, you pay for that.

+1 Real estate is a very shady industry with kickbacks to the realtor for everything: stagers, contractors to fix up your place to sell, contractors the buyer uses to update a home after it sells, title company, inspectors, etc. If your realtor recommends someone, then the realtor is almost certainly receiving a kickback for your business.

Did you know realtors can also apparently "invest" in mortgage companies? They refer all of their business to these new, never heard of, boutique companies, and then they get compensated based on their investment.

[Anonymous]

I think most don't do this as their full-time career.

They may also have real estate adjacent gigs like renovating, decorating, staging, property managing, etc.

[Anonymous]

Scamming people that's how.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My terrible realtor only has one house sold on his website...mine.The sale was a year ago

How did they do with the sale? Did you have 100% of his undivided attention?

[Anonymous]

AgentX wrote:I got 3 buyers under contract in one day last week. I'm not having an issue. Most agents I know aren't having an issue. The outliers are probably struggling.

I have lots of clients with lots of cash, they have been waiting for this moment. Most of my offers are 40% down to all-cash offers. I'm not finding the under $1M price point to be super competitive for the most part. But $1M - $2M is a disaster. THOSE buyers have money. So a blip in the market or interest rates doesn't affect them at all. I have clients who were in multiple offers on a $1.9M home. That's the fascinating part of this to me, where the buyers are in terms of price point.

What's hilarious is that we all made SO MUCH MONEY in the last few years, and now it's interesting to see who is poor-mouthing and who saved their money. Frankly, I'll take a year or two of lower income to see the idiots exit the industry. Also, NAR is considering raising our dues, which would go a long way toward getting the riff raff out of the industry.

Thanks for posting your take is very interesting. How is the market from say the lower end of under one million like $400-700k is this still not very competitive right now? Also do you work around a major city like DC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My terrible realtor only has one house sold on his website...mine.The sale was a year ago

How did they do with the sale? Did you have 100% of his undivided attention?

They did a terrible job. The scammy stager they recommended didn't even stage the porch and patio areas. The RE couldnt be arsed to check on their contractors to make sure the painting punchlist was complete when i was in the hospital. So the house could be listed on time.

[Anonymous]

My residential realtor friends seem to be doing just fine. My commercial real estate friends, OTOH, aren't doing great.

One couple both had to get 2nd jobs to supplement their income.

[Anonymous]

I have a neighbor who is an agent in the Potomac area. She gets most of the listings in our neighborhood and based on her posts is still selling actively. Her listings go in a few days. She just had one go under contract about 2 weeks ago and has another that just went on that looks like it will be snapped up fast (maybe it already did). I’m sure she’s not hurting given the house prices though I’m sure she’s way down from her peak volume.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The money is now in listings since everything sells. This is where experienced agents will clean up, as they have connections and the experience to get the listings. You'll see a lot of newer agents pivot to something else in the next few years because if you're a seller, why would you entrust your most important transaction to someone who lacks a lot of experience with it?

What does this mean? You can look at listings for free on Redfin and other sites. You mean agents finding clients who want to sell? We're looking at a difficult few years for that, PP. There was a the pandemic heyday, and now high interest rates have choked the market.

Yes - agents finding homes to list. There are fewer homes on the market this year than last, and it's probably going to be that way for a while. More buyers than sellers will keep prices high even with the interest rates higher.

[Anonymous]

AgentX wrote:I got 3 buyers under contract in one day last week. I'm not having an issue. Most agents I know aren't having an issue. The outliers are probably struggling.

I have lots of clients with lots of cash, they have been waiting for this moment. Most of my offers are 40% down to all-cash offers. I'm not finding the under $1M price point to be super competitive for the most part. But $1M - $2M is a disaster. THOSE buyers have money. So a blip in the market or interest rates doesn't affect them at all. I have clients who were in multiple offers on a $1.9M home. That's the fascinating part of this to me, where the buyers are in terms of price point.

What's hilarious is that we all made SO MUCH MONEY in the last few years, and now it's interesting to see who is poor-mouthing and who saved their money. Frankly, I'll take a year or two of lower income to see the idiots exit the industry. Also, NAR is considering raising our dues, which would go a long way toward getting the riff raff out of the industry. [/quote

This post is the classic agent post. There is always a suggestion that agent expenses are much higher than they actually are. Current NAR dues are $150 per year. Starting in 2024 they are increasing to $156 and a $45 surcharge to increase how much NAR spends on consumer marketing to encourage people to use agents more. I can think of no other business in the world that would complain about a $6 annual business expense increase. On the flip side agents have so few actual expenses (I'm not counting when they take a prospective buyer out to lunch, getting a deductible meal for themselves, oftentimes meals with family and friends paid by uncle Sam and a $100 expense that will result in a $50K commission) that $156 is a significant expense for them. Its almost as bad as the annual insurance which ranges from $300-600 per year.

[Anonymous]

I mean a million dollar house gets you like $40K at this point. How much of a cut does a broker get?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean a million dollar house gets you like $40K at this point. How much of a cut does a broker get?

Realtor commissions are usual 2.5%
AFAIK they haven't cut their fees yet