Reply to How many years until realtors are replaced by Redfin/Uber/Zillow/etc?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Does no one in the DC region offer flat fee brokerages?  When I lived in Florida a few years ago, I used a fairly known flat fee realtor from another part of the state. The way it works is that his brokerage was totally licensed. I paid him something like $350, and there was also a clause that said that the buyer's agent had to pay another $350 to him. I offered her 2.5% I believe. I had my own photos taken for $175 and wrote the listing myself. [b]Not hard to use Zillow for comps.[/b] For the flat fee, he posted the listing on the MLS and associated it with a brokerage - so it looks legit enough to other agents. Our house was well cared for and recently renovated, and I watch enough HGTV to know how to "stage" for selling.  No surprise, we were under contract at asking on the first day. This worked well for me because I worked from home at the time, so easy to do open houses.  The house sold for around $1m - so I saved a huge chunk of cash.  We used an attorney for closing (very common in florida) so felt like I was covered for contract purposes.

All that said, when we were moving back to DC, we used an agent remotely to go check stuff out for us. We wouldn't have been able to buy without her help since we didn't want to come up for every house.  She totally earned the 3% on that $1m house.

So do those types of flat fee brokers not exist here?  They're not for everyone, but it sure worked for us. [/quote]

:shock: [/quote]

zillow will give you the sales price so you can use it for comps...[/quote]

Usually delayed and rarely do you get enough information to really make an apples-to-apples. I mean, good luck with it, but oy.[/quote]

We're in DC and the info is usually up within a month of closing. We live in a rowhouse neighborhood and it's really easy to keep track of what comes on the market. It's also a very easy market for comparing comps: don't compare condos to rowhouses. Rowhouses are either the small variety (1300-1800 sf) or the large variety (over 2000), and within that are either "gut", "liveable" or "fully updated". Parking affects price, as does rentable basement apartment. You can get all of that from looking at the online listing pics (that stay up on redfin for ages).  I had a realtor advise me my old house in Columbia Heights should ask $375k - based on comps.  We thought that was crazy, listed at $525k and were under contract after the open house at full asking.  This is not rocket science. [/quote]

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