WSJ: Beware real estate cartel

[Anonymous]

There was a discount broker around 20 -25 years ago MLS shut off their site as was trying FSBO where house is listed on MLS.

When you went online to book appointment homeowner showed house. They also had these cool little things in front of house with AM radio signal you turn Chanel to frequency it told you about house and box contained house brochure.

They were charging $750 bucks fee to put your house in MLS.

There was a lawsuit that MLS should be open to all but NAR which has a huge lobby shut it down.

Amazing 20-25 years ago they briefly had this

[Anonymous]

Ugh I'm so sick of all these lobbies having so much influence over our lives!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DoJ is coming after you next:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-to-the-real-estate-cartel-11625783854

Finally, hopefully consumers can get away from this ridiculous system that compensates brokers exorbitant sums of money for only a few hours of work. TBH, a vast majority of the process could probably be largely automated for a $20 fee anyway. Ridiculous US consumers have so much wealth destroyed from insane fees, or are forced to buy less because of fees.

Funny, I did a 5 hour home inspection today with a lawyer who is involved in this case. Guess, I don't have to day anything else, and we will forgot about the twenty plus hours I spent with him at other houses, working out finances, and two previous pre inspections.

Funny how you cherry picked and only highlighted this one transaction. Are you suggesting there are no transactions that take less than 20 hours beginning to end? I’ve purchased/sold several homes both with realtors and on my own with a flat fee attorney. Realtor fees should be by the hour. $750 an hour will motivate buyers to be more precise with their search.

More like 75 cents an hour. We handed our agent the key to our house and she had it painted, floors refinished, deck and some other repairs done, had a new garage door installed, carpet cleaned in the basement, and had windows and house cleaned. She had the house staged and had photos, floorplans, and a tour done. She spent three hours sitting on her ass at an an open house and then made us respond to offers a few days later. She didn’t do anything after that except meet the appraiser, termite inspector, and our movers. She spent maybe a couple hours making sure the movers got everything out of the house and then took all our old paint to the County. She spent a lot of time with the settlement because we were in two places. For that she made over $9,000. She should have gotten $750 for the little she did. My neighbors were all impressed but she didn’t do any of the work

You're saying this isn't a lot of work to do and arrange? Why didn't you arrange any of these things?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DoJ is coming after you next:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-to-the-real-estate-cartel-11625783854

Finally, hopefully consumers can get away from this ridiculous system that compensates brokers exorbitant sums of money for only a few hours of work. TBH, a vast majority of the process could probably be largely automated for a $20 fee anyway. Ridiculous US consumers have so much wealth destroyed from insane fees, or are forced to buy less because of fees.

Funny, I did a 5 hour home inspection today with a lawyer who is involved in this case. Guess, I don't have to day anything else, and we will forgot about the twenty plus hours I spent with him at other houses, working out finances, and two previous pre inspections.

Funny how you cherry picked and only highlighted this one transaction. Are you suggesting there are no transactions that take less than 20 hours beginning to end? I’ve purchased/sold several homes both with realtors and on my own with a flat fee attorney. Realtor fees should be by the hour. $750 an hour will motivate buyers to be more precise with their search.

More like 75 cents an hour. We handed our agent the key to our house and she had it painted, floors refinished, deck and some other repairs done, had a new garage door installed, carpet cleaned in the basement, and had windows and house cleaned. She had the house staged and had photos, floorplans, and a tour done. She spent three hours sitting on her ass at an an open house and then made us respond to offers a few days later. She didn’t do anything after that except meet the appraiser, termite inspector, and our movers. She spent maybe a couple hours making sure the movers got everything out of the house and then took all our old paint to the County. She spent a lot of time with the settlement because we were in two places. For that she made over $9,000. She should have gotten $750 for the little she did. My neighbors were all impressed but she didn’t do any of the work

You're saying this isn't a lot of work to do and arrange? Why didn't you arrange any of these things?

I think it was sarcasm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DoJ is coming after you next:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-to-the-real-estate-cartel-11625783854

Finally, hopefully consumers can get away from this ridiculous system that compensates brokers exorbitant sums of money for only a few hours of work. TBH, a vast majority of the process could probably be largely automated for a $20 fee anyway. Ridiculous US consumers have so much wealth destroyed from insane fees, or are forced to buy less because of fees.

Funny, I did a 5 hour home inspection today with a lawyer who is involved in this case. Guess, I don't have to day anything else, and we will forgot about the twenty plus hours I spent with him at other houses, working out finances, and two previous pre inspections.

Funny how you cherry picked and only highlighted this one transaction. Are you suggesting there are no transactions that take less than 20 hours beginning to end? I’ve purchased/sold several homes both with realtors and on my own with a flat fee attorney. Realtor fees should be by the hour. $750 an hour will motivate buyers to be more precise with their search.

For comparison, commercial real estate lawyers with ten years of experience and degrees from Harvard, etc. working on $10-50 million deals usually charge less than $750.

For a real estate agent, $200 is probably more reasonable.

[Anonymous]

I agree with OP, I support getting rid of the REaltor concept and cartel! Most people I imagine would agree. I don't know any person who has bought a house in this market and thinks the realtor was worth the money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DoJ is coming after you next:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-to-the-real-estate-cartel-11625783854

Finally, hopefully consumers can get away from this ridiculous system that compensates brokers exorbitant sums of money for only a few hours of work. TBH, a vast majority of the process could probably be largely automated for a $20 fee anyway. Ridiculous US consumers have so much wealth destroyed from insane fees, or are forced to buy less because of fees.

Funny, I did a 5 hour home inspection today with a lawyer who is involved in this case. Guess, I don't have to day anything else, and we will forgot about the twenty plus hours I spent with him at other houses, working out finances, and two previous pre inspections.

Please.. Just because you insert yourself into the process and waste everyone’s time and do a bunch of busy work doesn’t mean you actually add value. Anyone can putz around and pretend I’m “negotiating” and “sealing the deal” Agents who actually add value are a tiny sliver, at the high end of the market.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with OP, I support getting rid of the REaltor concept and cartel! Most people I imagine would agree. I don't know any person who has bought a house in this market and thinks the realtor was worth the money.

except the seller pays the realtors/brokers, not the buyers. the realtors generally only owe fiduciary duty to the sellers. So, you can't really ask buyers if they think they got their money's worth with a realtor because that's not where the effort or expense is going.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are you prattling on about? A “few hours of work?” What are you smoking that gives you such delusions?

GMAFB

We went to open houses allllll on our own accord. Zillow and Redfin made that information easy to find. Our agent showed us two houses during times that weren't during open houses, that was it. We put in an offer on a house after looking at an open house. The RE agent pretty much filled in a boilerplate template for a contract with our names and that was it. There's no way he spent more than 24 hours let alone a full work week worth of work into our purchase. The RE fees for both sellers and buyers will total to something like $30k+. For what? Consumers doing all of the work online and filling out a template offer sheet with a few clicks of a button? The brokers just used rocket mortgage to get us a mortgage.....I could have done that. Almost $40k in added in total fees for almost no added value. The internet has made the RE biz a dinosaur of the past. You can easily find comps and all of the meta data for evaluating properties easily online with a little bit of effort. It's sooooooo ridiculous what Americans pay in fees compared to the rest of the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DoJ is coming after you next:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-to-the-real-estate-cartel-11625783854

Finally, hopefully consumers can get away from this ridiculous system that compensates brokers exorbitant sums of money for only a few hours of work. TBH, a vast majority of the process could probably be largely automated for a $20 fee anyway. Ridiculous US consumers have so much wealth destroyed from insane fees, or are forced to buy less because of fees.

Funny, I did a 5 hour home inspection today with a lawyer who is involved in this case. Guess, I don't have to day anything else, and we will forgot about the twenty plus hours I spent with him at other houses, working out finances, and two previous pre inspections.

LMAO....so you basically admit you probably did less than 40 hours of total work on the total transaction....which is less than a full weeks' worth of full time employment. And you'll probably clear $10k, $20, 30k+ in fees on the single deal....that you spent less than full weeks' worth of work on. Ridiculous. Imagine if all full time workers got paid $10k per week for a full weeks' worth of work.


So. over. priced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with OP, I support getting rid of the REaltor concept and cartel! Most people I imagine would agree. I don't know any person who has bought a house in this market and thinks the realtor was worth the money.

except the seller pays the realtors/brokers, not the buyers. the realtors generally only owe fiduciary duty to the sellers. So, you can't really ask buyers if they think they got their money's worth with a realtor because that's not where the effort or expense is going.

This is false. You know how the seller pays the realtor? By raising prices...which is just passed onto the buyer in the end.

[Anonymous]

The real problem is the conflict of interest. It’s in the best interest of both the seller and buyer agents (the later is your representation) to make sure you spend as much as possible.

More commission, better for the market. When we bought our current house, we received a buyers credit, rather than a lower sales price. Again more commission for them, better for the market, higher taxes for us, and revenue for the city.

The only people guaranteed to make money in real estate are the realtors and the government.

[Anonymous]

Also let’s say you buy a one million dollar home with 5 percent commission. ($50,000)

If no broker and owner sold it to you for $950 both buyer and sell less transfer taxes, buyer less mortgage recoding taxes. Buyer up front saves $50k. But wait if you live there full 30 years the extra 50k mortgage will cost you 2-3x times as much due to added interest over 30 years.

My house seller paid $70k in realtor fees. I saw house in Redfin day listed. I showed up same day at Thursday night open house. My realtor was busy so could not go so just wrote down name. Realtor just say there chit chatting daughter did not even show house. I bought it. I had to negotiate a few things with seller after contract and she gave me his number. We talk direct. They literally did tops 2 hours work. I am not counting showing up for closing to get check.

[Anonymous]

Would you prefer that real estate agents be salaried and real estate brokerages operate like the Department of Motor Vehicles?
"Good to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, I am glad to help you sell your home. Let's see- today is May 8, I have an opening to list your home July 17, with the first open house September 22. After we list your home, I can help you find a new home in early November."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would you prefer that real estate agents be salaried and real estate brokerages operate like the Department of Motor Vehicles?
"Good to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, I am glad to help you sell your home. Let's see- today is May 8, I have an opening to list your home July 17, with the first open house September 22. After we list your home, I can help you find a new home in early November."

Please. The DMV is always thrown out as the worst example of government. In reality, it should be the equivalent of an hourly certified financial planner instead of a % of assets private wealth manager. Neither of these professions offer much value add for the % that they take and make. Maybe with the real estate broker should be paid hourly and get a small percentage of the value of the house above an agreed upon base market value as an incentive but that’s it. And yes, as someone who has worked in high finance (eg, investment banking, private equity), I have a low opinion of real estate brokers, private wealth managers and most hedge funds (which should also only get paid above a benchmark rather than 2&20%).