What real use are real estate agents if we can sell our home ourselves?
In: Economics
I suppose it’s all what you’re comfortable with. I don’t pay a mechanic. I’ve been a mechanic or similar for 20 years, but I would use a realtor because I’m not comfortable with that work on my own.
A lot of people have made some good points here for buyers but I haven’t seen anyone mention the reason why it’s important to as a seller. The commission comes out of the sale price, the buyer doesn’t typically pay a realtor. That being said, a realtor isn’t going to bring their clients to your house if there’s no commission in it because you’re trying to sell it privately. If you have your house for sale, you typically want as much exposure as possible to get a quick sale or even multiple offers to get the most money. Removing yourself from 90% of the market would make it difficult to sell unless you’re in an extremely demanding area.
We had a crap situation where our realtor really helped us out of a jam. We bought a flipped house from a corporation who had inadvertently bundled our property with 10 others in a very large loan. Hence they put an illegal loan on our house after we had purchased it.
We didn’t realize this until a year later when we went to refinance the mortgage for lower rates.
We texted, called, emailed the corporation that formerly owned our property and got no where. After a month of this, I pinged our realtor and we had the paper work fixed within a week.
TDLR: llegal loan fixed by our realtor.
simply put, they know more about how to sell a house, and theyre better at it. they know all the things people try to use to haggle down the price, they literally negotiate house prices for a living, and they know better what to price it at to begin with, and how to get all the proper paperwork done.
Residential realtors are completely obsolete, overpaid and are constant purveyors of misinformation! I have bought and sold a bunch of houses and every, single time there is a point where a know nothing realtor says “you can’t write that into a contract” or “you can’t do that” and I have to tell them they don’t know what they are talking about. Good commercial realtors can add some value but are probably still overpaid. Residential realty agency is 100% only around because lobbying, protectionism and their stranglehold on the MLS.
Funny another thread was going on and on about how evil landlords are but real estate agents take even more money out of peoples pockets and no ones bats an eye
I think they’re great for first time buyers because they know all the inspections you should do and have resources if you need a second opinion. Also good if you don’t have time to look yourself or need your options narrowed down. They definitely make too much though. Our realtor spent a lot of time because we were looking at rural properties so there was a lot of driving. Still made too much. If you can live 6 months to a year on one week of part-time work there’s something wrong.
One thing I pointed out to my coworker when she was asking this question.
They have the time to actually deal with potential buyers. They are the ones who deal with offers and counter offers. If you try to do it yourself, if you can only answer the phone 3 or 4 hours out of the day, you are going to lose lots of potential buyers. I read somewhere that the difference between selling your home yourself and using an agent is a $60,000 difference in sale price.
Their job is to sell your home and get you the most money possible. And they want to get the most money possible because their commission in based off of your sale price.
To keep to the spirit of the sub: Real Estate Agents will likely do a better job selling your house than you do. Thats basically the idea. House sales can be complicated and though marketing isn’t way easier nowadays, the ins-and-outs of bank loans, mortgages and title exchanges are pretty involved and it helps having someone in service that can handle/consult with on these matters.
Especially now, when homes sell within weeks not months due to the purchasing climate of investors looking for safe investment storage for their capital. Housing should never be used like this, slum lords for wealth pushing the rest of us out into the street.
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