What real use are real estate agents if we can sell our home ourselves?
In: Economics
I guess it was designed to prevent fraud like you selling your house to yourself in order to wash money.
Having bought and sold several homes with and without realtors over the years, I would suggest first-time home buyers and perhaps buyers in a new city/market go with a realtor, to leverage knowledge and networks. By that I mean you can take advantage of their knowledge of which neighborhoods are desirable, which communities offer the amenities that are important to you, and maybe which contractors and home inspectors you can use, provided they offer you a variety of options for each and aren’t just getting kickbacks from the contractors for referrals.
Beyond that, the internet really seemed to make realtors obsolete for us. And I watched that shift happen in real time. I was able to pull comparable homes and recent sales in my market and figure out what the average price per square foot and level of finish was. I hired a real estate attorney to help negotiate contracts and offers, and after getting hooked up with or finding my own home inspectors and contractors that I trusted, I was able to navigate those aspects as a buyer and seller myself.
Before the internet easily offered the tools to price and market your home as a seller and find listings as a buyer, realtors were essential. Now, their utility is far more limited.
To keep the Escalade market flowing, as well as park bench, grocery cart, and billboard marketing industry support, they are one of the last great Glamour Shots clients.
We live in California and we bought a house we lived in which theoretically wouldn’t require an agent. We hired an agent and negotiated a fixed fee with her. She had access to all the correct contracts snd paperwork, negotiated on our behalf, advised us on strategy and price and connected us with a network of contractors to use post sale. We originally tried to use a lawyer to work through this with but they were much nicer expensive and much less knowledgeable. They were more focused on executing various contracts than on offering any advising or strategy.
As with most things these days you don’t NEED to hire an expert but they can save you a ton of money and liability in certain situations.
We live in California and we bought a house we lived in which theoretically wouldn’t require an agent. We hired an agent and negotiated a fixed fee with her. She had access to all the correct contracts snd paperwork, negotiated on our behalf, advised us on strategy and price and connected us with a network of contractors to use post sale. We originally tried to use a lawyer to work through this with but they were much nicer expensive and much less knowledgeable. They were more focused on executing various contracts than on offering any advising or strategy.
As with most things these days you don’t NEED to hire an expert but they can save you a ton of money and liability in certain situations.
In markets like this, some people like to use a realtor because they don’t want to deal with the 50+ people who might want to see the house.
There was a story in Canada about a home that went up for sale and had 700+ people who wanted to look at the house.
In a market like this, you’ll make more selling it yourself, but for some people, they’ll accept less money to not have to deal with all those people
In markets like this, some people like to use a realtor because they don’t want to deal with the 50+ people who might want to see the house.
There was a story in Canada about a home that went up for sale and had 700+ people who wanted to look at the house.
In a market like this, you’ll make more selling it yourself, but for some people, they’ll accept less money to not have to deal with all those people
What use is a lawyer if you can represent yourself?
It’s difficult to answer this question because Realtors vary in quality so widely that it would be difficult to make accurate statements about them as a group. The difference between an excellent Realtor and one who is barely competent is significant. Also, your utility of a Realtor is tied directly to your own level of knowledge and comfort as a client either buying or selling, which brings me to my other point:
Since many Redditors are generally tech savy to some degree and are accustomed to researching various topics (yes, really!), many of them aren’t likely to require a Realtor quite as much as those people who are less accustomed to utilizing internet sources. For many folks out there who are still mystified about opening a PDF or using basic Microsoft Word functions, a Realtor can be an invaluable resource.
Yep— my daughter just got a beautiful Victorian for a song by dealing directly with the seller and doing the pprwork herself. A lawyer was hired to double-check but it was actually a breeze and they saved many THOUSANDS this way. Realtors do take the pain and aggravation of pprwork and negotiation out of the equation— which is good and sometimes well worth it to ppl who hate hassle or hate dealing with other ppl— but they really are vastly overpaid considering the actual work or sweat put into the deal.
This isn’t to say that just anyone can do this with no problems. You have to research and know what you’re doing, know about the contracts, and how to navigate the real estate taxes and laws in whatever area you buy in, but technically— it can be done so much cheaper without an agent.
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