Oh this is a tough one!! So, if you don’t know (haven’t heard). “The National Association of Realtors settled a lawsuit last week that could up-end the way real estate agents are paid, doing away with the traditional agent’s commission of 5-6%. ” (NPR Article).
I. Don’t. Know.
I think this is a lot more complicated than just “evil realtors!!!” Those percentages haven’t been set by realtors in ages. This one isn’t something like “Napster was illegally sharing music” or “Microsoft was doing monopoly things.” Individual agents might never have thought twice about these fees. And since it was usually baked into the seller’s cost, it helped buyers afford more.
Hell, I couldn’t have coughed up the thousands of dollars to cover 3% of the cost of my condo when I bought it. I drained my savings to come up with a down payment of like 6-7%. Coming up with almost anything for my realtor could have made my condo (first house) out of reach. And I was able to scrape together more than a lot of first time homebuyers.
And my agent 100% earned her commission. Both my condo hunt and then when my husband and I did our house hunt…. she spent 100+ hours going house-to-house. Now. For both on Wed or Thurs, I would send a list and say “this is what we want to see this weekend” and she would make sure they were (a) still on the market and (b) available for viewing. So like, we did the sorting and she did the calling… and then she used her realtor code or whatever to get us inside houses.
On the other sock, I love the freedom to negotiate. If there is a negligible difference between the work a realtor puts into the sale of $200,000 house and a $2,000,000 house but they get 3% either way… that seems….. wrong. Just wrong.
It’s hard. I’m curious how this is going to change the housing market both in the short term and the long term. I don’t know if it will be good or end up driving something bad. I can’t tell for sure. I see some things (like buying agents getting screwed and rich people being shitheads) which I think will probably happen…
I think it’s something to watch.
Dream by Day 