Anonymous wrote:Travel agents are still out there and thirsty AF, plenty of suckers still using them, and plenty of companies still giving kickbacks as "incentives" for them to stay in business. No need for them IMO, but real estate involves contracts, and I think it's important to have someone knowledgeable on contracts review them. I dont think we really need any agents to walk you through a house or tell you how many bedrooms there are though. And my husband is a former realtor lol.

The thing is most realtors aren't attorneys so they aren't supposed to be providing legal advice about the contract so that's not an area where they can add value.

I do think there is a value for a door opener at an hourly rate because most people don't want the homeowners around when they see the house and sellers aren't going to want someone alone in their house. There is also some flat fee value for someone to list the house because it costs money to access the MLS system.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Travel agents are still out there and thirsty AF, plenty of suckers still using them, and plenty of companies still giving kickbacks as "incentives" for them to stay in business. No need for them IMO

I will do $3.2M in business this year with $2M travelled this year with $2.2M on the books for next year. Many of us are turning away business and not “thirsty AF”.

Maybe know what you are talking about before spouting your truth.

Like the PP, I turn away business and am not even listed online to contact me.

Lol ok

My mom did what PP did. She is a small business owner and decided that she would rather study and get the license to sell her own house.

She ended up selling her house for above list and decided to quit, never in real estate again. She said the whole thing was a total scam. There's really nothing you can do to raise the price of the house you know that right, everyone? If you live in a crappy house and neighborhood, even if your realtor could sell ice to an eskimo, it's going for a specific number and that's it. No amount of staging is going to fix a house that sucks and in the wrong location.

The whole thing is about pricing the list right. You can't price it too high nor low but most realtors, they want to make their records look good, so they will price it market, not taking into consideration much else. The savvy realtor will recognize if a house is special enough to be able to get more for it. Staging is important. But it's not a hard thing. It's a matter of experience and street smarts really. The harder part is getting the listing from someone of course but it's not the actual transaction of it. My mom thought the whole thing was so idiotic because it is what it is. You can't change up a house to what it isn't, a lot of it is location and set up on the front end on where you can go with it.

I fired 3 realtors and finally sold my own house using a realtor who I made listen to me, listing it as a 3BR (the way sold to us), not 2BR (because the 3rd BR did not have a closet). If they didn't do what I said, I wouldn't use them. Ultimately, we sold our house over list in a bidding war at the price I set within 1 week of list! In fact, the sales price matched the exact number I said our house would sell for.

The other 3 realtors did the market numbers and insisted our house was too small to be listed so high. I said - OK you know the street we live on is gold right? The street is worth money on its own, never mind though small, our house shows 50x better than most large houses. I was right and I am not a realtor but I am in sales I sell people as a recruiter -- MUCH MUCH harder LOL!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still use TAs occasionally, although not often. When we bought out house, no realtors were involved; it was for sale by owner, and DH and I saw no need for a realtor of our own (fwiw DH and I are attorneys, as was one the sellers, so YMMV).

I’m OP and DH and I are both lawyers too, but I don’t know what good that does us here.

I'm a lawyer too, and looked into getting my real estate license to avoid paying the fee when buying our house. If I recall, it would have been pointless since the seller's real estate agent gets the 5 or 6 %, and then splits it back with the buyer's agent, and there was no guarantee I'd get the buyer's side agent fee as the buyer. So I used Redfin to buy our house, offered $10K over the asking price (there were 2 full price offers already), and ended up getting about $20K back on the transaction! First-time buyers probably need a real estate agent, but this was my 3rd house, and I hate that some random person gets 5-6% of the value of the house for walking the paperwork - still amazing to me. Basically, each real estate firm (x2) gets 1.5%, and the agents (x2) get 1.5% each. Hire a home inspector and a real estate attorney, and get rid of the middlemen and middlewomen.

OP again. I’ve just always used Redfin. It’s not so much money that I would rather figure it out myself.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I still use TAs occasionally, although not often. When we bought out house, no realtors were involved; it was for sale by owner, and DH and I saw no need for a realtor of our own (fwiw DH and I are attorneys, as was one the sellers, so YMMV).

I’m OP and DH and I are both lawyers too, but I don’t know what good that does us here.

I'm a lawyer too, and looked into getting my real estate license to avoid paying the fee when buying our house. If I recall, it would have been pointless since the seller's real estate agent gets the 5 or 6 %, and then splits it back with the buyer's agent, and there was no guarantee I'd get the buyer's side agent fee as the buyer. So I used Redfin to buy our house, offered $10K over the asking price (there were 2 full price offers already), and ended up getting about $20K back on the transaction! First-time buyers probably need a real estate agent, but this was my 3rd house, and I hate that some random person gets 5-6% of the value of the house for walking the paperwork - still amazing to me. Basically, each real estate firm (x2) gets 1.5%, and the agents (x2) get 1.5% each. Hire a home inspector and a real estate attorney, and get rid of the middlemen and middlewomen.

I only used realtor once as it was an out of estate purchase and it was the only bad buy in my real estate portfolio. She added no real value, just airbrushed reality to seal the deal and take the commission.

Anonymous wrote:Now mind you I’m not even one of those “realtors are useless and the industry is a scam” people. I like having a realtor hold my hand through a purchase. But JFC I can’t believe we killed off the travel planner first! A halfway decent agent taking over the selection of flights, hotels, and car rentals would add much more to my QOL than any of the middle men still standing.

We are in an era of internet access to all the details once only travel agents or realtors were privy to. We don't need to waste our hard earned money on no such middlemen to hold our hands. When not certain, crowdsource your issue, people can help each other. Just like we bartered things and services before money, we can barter expertise, knowledge and wisdom.

On the 3 homes I’ve purchased/sold I’ve only used a realtor once. It’s a choice, not a requirement. People are stupid with their money in hot markets.

Anonymous wrote:I still use TAs occasionally, although not often. When we bought out house, no realtors were involved; it was for sale by owner, and DH and I saw no need for a realtor of our own (fwiw DH and I are attorneys, as was one the sellers, so YMMV).

I’m OP and DH and I are both lawyers too, but I don’t know what good that does us here.

Wow op you're not wrong! I agree with you.

Anonymous wrote:Travel agents are still out there and thirsty AF, plenty of suckers still using them, and plenty of companies still giving kickbacks as "incentives" for them to stay in business. No need for them IMO

I will do $3.2M in business this year with $2M travelled this year with $2.2M on the books for next year. Many of us are turning away business and not “thirsty AF”.

Maybe know what you are talking about before spouting your truth.

Like the PP, I turn away business and am not even listed online to contact me.

Realtors should be paid an hourly fee like lawyers.

I still use TAs occasionally, although not often. When we bought out house, no realtors were involved; it was for sale by owner, and DH and I saw no need for a realtor of our own (fwiw DH and I are attorneys, as was one the sellers, so YMMV).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think realtors are a good idea but wow are they overcompensated. They should be paid a flat fee. Do they really do more work selling a 1.5M house over a 750k?

I would imagine it takes a lot longer to sell a more expensive house than an affordable one.

Not always. The 750k house might be priced low because it's a disaster with deferred maintenance. A sparking, updated 1.5m house will sell in a weekend.

You are assuming it's in a major city with a booming market. Higher priced houses absolutely sit longer, as the buyer pool is smaller. Usually there are better photos, staging, marketing & advertising involved.

I think that's what realtors say but I don't think it is really true. People find houses on zillow/redfin/realtor.com now... yes there need to be good quality pics and there might be some staging needs.... I'm not buying the marginal increase in a few hundred to thousand extra for good/more pictures is worth the extra 45k in commission (btwn 750k and 1.5M).

I don't think realtors are completely useless. For example, I was looking to rent a house in a city where I knew nothing and needed to balance schools with commute time etc and it was helpful to have someone knowledgeable. That said, I've bought 3 houses in the last 10 years and *I* (not our relator) found 3/3 via alerts I set on redfin.

There are lots of unsuccessful real estate agents, though. You’re just thinking of the good ones. About 80% of the people I know from high school who didn’t go to college or didn’t have a plan after college tried real estate for a while, but most weren’t successful.

I also miss travel agents. Does anyone have recommendations? So overwhelming, especially international travel.