re: Article: There are way too many real-estate agents

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People are told that actually getting a house to closing is hard.

Also, there is still a need for agents. Many buyers don't want to deal with directly with the homeowner but that will change if NAR loses its current lawsuit.

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Most people are idiots that have no idea what they’re doing and would make serious screwups without an agent to guide them. Either they’d get taken advantage of in negotiations or have no clue how to handle the inspection window.

But there’s definitely too many agents. But blame that on brokerages that hire part time agents that are only doing RE as a side gig. I don’t see how they can provide the expected level of service when they’re busy working another full time job and have limited availability for showings, submitting timely offers or counter offers, or being present for inspections. Slow times in the RE market will weed most of those out though

Never trust a Weinstein. Or a Biden.

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What you will find, though, is that these people come out of the woodwork in a good economy then starve in a downturn unless they develop skills or connections.

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That's how a market is supposed to function.

No need to regulate licensing more than it is.

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People are told that actually getting a house to closing is hard.

Also, there is still a need for agents. Many buyers don't want to deal with directly with the homeowner but that will change if NAR loses its current lawsuit.

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You're giving the general population waaaaayyyyy too much credit in the realm of literacy(financial or otherwise). This is the biggest purchase most people will take part in during their lives.

Sluts have to eat too.

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As far as the NAR lawsuit, if they lose, I’m not sure it will change things much.

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I think first time home buyers will have a LOT more trouble getting into that first house if they have to cover the buy side commission. Contracts may be written to include it, but, I have a feeling it's not going to work out how people think it might.

All that said, I agree with their being too many agents. I think the model today is slightly flawed. It should mirror an apprenticeship more than it does today.

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Sluts have to eat too.

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of dick

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"Protecting the consumer" is the same line all state licensing boards use. It's such BS and how we end up with crap like people in debt up their eyeballs with student loans for jobs that shouldn't even require a license or degree. Or how people end up stuck in jobs because when the barrier to entry gets too high you stop people from potentially starting their own business.

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Protecting the consumer isn't something that will happen with steeper regulations or higher barriers to entry. The very nature of real estate sales is driven on the price of the home. The higher the agent can convince the buyer to buy, the more their commission. That isn't something that bad salesman are going to budge on.

The whole home buying process, current house prices, effect of interest rates and so on were created when house prices were much lower and hasn't deviated. It's much easier to afford 9% interest when entry level homes were under $100k (my first house in 2010 was $96k at around 4%). The 3% realtor fee, easier when the price was under $100k. Property taxes, cheaper when the house price was under $100k. The hugest problem we have right now are inflated prices and a lack of acknowledgement that property taxes have only increase percentage wise, and drives home ownership expenses through the roof.

If an agent were to actually fight for the buyer to pay a lower price, which neither sellers or buyers agents really do that earnestly, I wouldn't mind having a sliding scale for commission (even over 3%). But agents aren't going to tell home buyers the ugly truth about maxing their budget out, that they'll be home poor. Or the natural tax increase when you buy a house after the first year. They just say "max that sucker out and figure it out later" which leads to huge problems down the road.

I lucked into the house I'm currently in that we bought about a year ago. They were asking $x, then dropped the price by $50k which is what we offered, then the home appraised for $67k less, and we got it for that price. Apparently, that was at the end of the huge fiasco where everyone was going way over asking to get a house, and appraisers were given a very stern warning and reminded that they were accountable for their appraisals, and they started appraising at actual market values rather than based on the offer price. But had that not been the case, I would have overpaid by $67k for my current house. Comps in my area were somewhat difficult because there weren't a whole lot of recent comparable sales so they had to take the comps they could find and make additional adjustments to get to a true comp number. My agent was less than enthused when the price dropped that much. The sellers agent ended up taking 0 commission on that any agent even came down to 1.5% on the house because I was fed up with how we got in the situation to begin with.

Sorry for the word wall.

The number of realtors isn't the problem. It is that they charge too much commission for the actual work performed.

They are all gung ho until you get into a contract with them and sign in the yard. Then they don't do anything.

They make 3% for basically putting a sign in the yard. With today’s information and technology they don’t really serve a purpose.