Anonymous wrote:My realtor gave me a pizza oven - it was super generous and i love it (and her). She checked with my husband first - she knows i love to cook and ran the idea part him. Makes me love her even more - we’ve done at least 3 house deals together so far and her job skills are much more important to me than the gift - I’ll keep working with her even if she gave me nothing ever, but it was a very thoughtful and generous gift.

This.

Anonymous wrote:You people sound really petty. These realtors if they work for agencies take only a small part of the commission home. Buying a $1.75m house and wining about not getting some small gift makes you sound pathetic.

Every time I see someone post this I feel the need to correct it. The vast majority of realtors keep at least 85% of commission. Many keep more than that up to 100%. The places that pay 85% generally employ new agents, low producing no agents or like compass pay their agents a fee to obligate the agent to stay with them for many years. For a very high dollar even the fee could be $500,000. So when factored into the commission rate those agents generally earn 90%. Insurance typically runs agents $600/ yr. 90% of agents in the us spend less than $1K per year in marketing. 99% spend less than $10K/ yr marketing.

Indeed he amount you pay is almost entirely kept by the agent, even after expenses.

Anonymous wrote:You people sound really petty. These realtors if they work for agencies take only a small part of the commission home. Buying a $1.75m house and wining about not getting some small gift makes you sound pathetic.

+1

My realtor gave us homemade jam at Xmas about 6 months after closing. I wasn’t impressed.

My house was $400k. I got $300 gift card to the best restaurant in town and an amazing flower bouquet from Winston’s.

We got nothing, but she was a pretty good agent overall so I’m not salty. Or rather, to the extent I’m salty, it’s about things she did or didn’t do as our agent. Who cares about cheap gifts when you just did a million dollar transaction?

I was in my 20s, single and buying my first single family home. The house was 230,000. My gift was a key chain from Tiffany's. I liked it. She also treated me to lunch one day while we were looking at properties.

We got champagne, a small tool bag, and later a huge pie on Thanksgiving.

Anonymous wrote:we got a bottle of champagne at closing... last thanksgiving a costco pie (we have a gluten free house and gave it away)- this year, a gift box of chocolates at christmas time (also gave 90% away due to celiac)

You gave away 90% of a box of chocolates?

Anonymous wrote:The gifting realtors…are they female?

This is interesting. If yes, would you expect a gift from a male realtor?

My realtor gave me a pizza oven - it was super generous and i love it (and her). She checked with my husband first - she knows i love to cook and ran the idea part him. Makes me love her even more - we’ve done at least 3 house deals together so far and her job skills are much more important to me than the gift - I’ll keep working with her even if she gave me nothing ever, but it was a very thoughtful and generous gift.

I have gotten realtor gifts ranging from nothing to a ham to taking us to a nice lunch after the closing. I kind of don't care.

In 2003 my agent spent approx $400 on gifts. More recently my horrible agent, gave us nothing other than a few empty boxes she had for me to use in packing. She was the worst agent, did the least, screwed things up and became nasty when I complained to her about not representing my interests.

Let's just be done with the whole realtor scam. Use redfin or another discount service and forget about gifts. You'll save 10s of the thousands just doing that. I predict in another decade a realtor will basically go the way of cashiers who have largely been replaced by LCD touch screens

Oops DM = DW