Selling my house. Why do I have to pay the buyer's agent?

You want someone to sell your house for you and not make any money?

With that logic, your boss should just skip your next paycheck.

Because I think you’re dumb that you can’t figure this out on your own.

If you have a buyer with no agent, your agent will still get 6% minus what they pay to their broker. If you have a buyer with an agent, they split commission 3% & 3% minus their broker fee. Either way you want to justify it, you’re still going to pay 6% regardless of what agents are involved.

If you “don’t want to pay the buyers agent” then raise your sale price by 3%. Buyer will probably laugh at you though and your house will never get under contract.

You can also try and negotiate the commission percentage, then your agent will laugh at you.

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f you have a buyer with no agent, your agent will still get 6% minus what they pay to their broker.

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You 2017 join date posters are worthless. Quit replying and go back to the OT.

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The agents generally split the commission. Everything is negotiable, you don’t have to. You don’t have to pay your agent 3%, it can be more or less.

The buyer’s agent will do the most work with the buyer. Showing your house, talking with them over options, getting it in front of them. If you’re not willing to pay them for that, it’s very unlikely they’ll be willing to show your house. If you refuse, the buyer will be responsible for their realtor fee, and this will impact their offers as well.

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Yea, understandable but if the buyer's agent got them in the house they wanted then you would think it would be customary for the buyer to pay for that service. I feel like real estate is very convoluted and very "tight knit". Alas, I likely won't negotiate and stick with 3%.

I understand your point, but this is just the customary way this business works. If you drop the commission, your house is less likely to be shown by buying agent. If you require buyer to pay, the buyer will likely just drop the price.

I would double check the language of the 3% 3% split. A lot of times if the selling agent is doing all of the work, they will take the entire 6%. This is definitely the case if they are the one that finds the buyer. The last house I sold, the selling agent offered to take 2.5% and the buying agent got the standard 3%.

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The selling agent fee is 3%, the buyer agent fee is 3%. If no buyer agent exist, I pay 3%, not 6. And as the above poster stated, everything is negotiable.

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Not necessarily.

The sales commission percentage that you pay is worked out when you sign your listing agreement. Although it is true that nothing is set in stone. But typically, there is an agreed upon commission (6% or whatever), and then there is subagency split paid by the listing agency to the selling agency, if they're two different brokers. And from there, the agents are paid by each broker, depending on what split arrangements they have with their respective brokers (the buyer and seller probably won't know anything about that).

There are people who employ (actual) buyer's brokers and the buyer may pay that broker or agent. That agent works for and legally represents the buyer. So often, buyers will refer to someone as "their agent", when legally he is not. Have you signed an agreement with that agent? No. The seller is paying him and his only legal duty (depending on state laws) to the buyer is to treat him fairly. But if the seller has signed a listing agreement, where the agreed upon sales commission is listed as (let's say) 6%, then the listing agency still gets 6% - same as if the listing agent and the selling agent is the same person/agency. In fact, in cases where the broker is (by contract) representing the buyer, he may be prohibited from accepting the subagent's fee, if he is already being paid by the buyer. Especially when you move into larger investment deals or commercial, the things that people take for granted in smaller residential deals get a finer point on them.

But anyway, most everything is negotiable and no one has to do anything that they have not agreed to in a contract.

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If you “don’t want to pay the buyers agent” then raise your sale price by 3%. Buyer will probably laugh at you though and your house will never get under contract.

You can also try and negotiate the commission percentage, then your agent will laugh at you.

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Totally dependent on the market in a area, around here houses move in days with multiple offers above asking price, a agent trying to get 6% commission would be laughed at.

The real estate industry is a dinosaur in desperate need of being dragged into the current world similar to taxis prior to Uber. The US needs something like purplebricks. Real estate agents are close to worthless for most residential transactions with the massive amount of information available to anyone with a smart phone. Real estate agents and their inflated commissions will be dead before too long

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Essentially, I'm paying for having all the paperwork and title aspects of the sale.

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When I have sold by owner other than the purchase contract, the title company and the buyers mortgage company did the paper work. Any competent lawyer can draw up a purchase agreement for a fraction of what a agents commission would be, that's if you don't trust using one from an online source.

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Everyone can agree that it is ripe for disruption. The profession will go the way of the taxi driver and I’m excited for it.

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Can't happen soon enough for me, the 6% commission is nothing but price fixing, and should have been stopped years ago.