that’s why competition is good…

I’m sure you’ll get more business in the cooling market as people try to save where they can…

keep it up…

Great Points.

It is just about the same amount of work to list a $200,000 house as a $400,000 house. (However, I have noticed that the more expensive the home the more difficult (snoody) the client).

Another interesting thing is that it seems fairly common for Realtors to reduce their commission for high end homes because they can make more money. My thing is this, now that every home in King County is high end ($400,000+ is average) why not reduce commissions accross the board?

then why do RE Agents get paid double for doing the same work?

Therein lies the problem…

and that is why outfits like Marlow’s will fluorish until the monopoly crumbles from within…

The other problem is that most RE agents never got that huge raise mentioned elsewhere as they only became RE agents in the last 5 years and were not around when you actually had to work to sell a house… these newbies always assumed that RE agents made that much money all the time.. surprise…

These same transaction enhancements make it easy for people to buy/sell their own homes. There was a time when you had to have an RE company behind you to place a four-color add with typeset print in daily, weekly, or monthly publications. Now, anyone can post up-to-date ads on Craigslist (or the Seattle Times/PI classifieds), estimate their home value on Zillow, and use Redfin to handle the transactional details in half the time it used to take to print a black and white flyer.

We saw this transformation in the stock market (remember when brokers used to charge $100 per trade?), and -boom!- you had day-traders building a stock market bubble. The same thing is happening to housing (except worse, thanks to the massive credit bubble).

Cars are mass-produced. Multiple copies of the same model are identical in features. The buyer has a huge array of flexibility in finding a seller of that identical, mass-produced product. Information about purchase and pricing is freely available.

But in real estate, every property is different, and highly dependent on very specific market characteristics. Making a comparison between one property and another requires a great deal of information, and is very time sensitive.

That information is tightly guarded by a cartel, which sells “services” that are bundled with the information.

If MLS data was truly free and timely, a motivated buyer would have no reason at all to hire an agent.

And that’s why the cartel members are crapping themselves over the Redfins and Zillows of the world.

When it comes to buying a house, everything is backwards from how it should be. It’s all about the monthly payment. I think this is largely why prices have been allowed to get so out of control. I’d write more, but I’m actually saving it for a full post :^)

Let’s say I know absolutely nothing about buying a car. Would it be better to walk blindly into a car dealership, listen to what the salesman had to say and then base my entire purchasing decision on that? To add insult to that, be led directly into another room to work out the financing “options”? (GM and Ford haven’t made a real profit in years without GMAC)

Wouldn’t it be more prudent to research the car online at consumer reports and then possibly pay someone to go in and negotiate the deal on my behalf? ($100-500)

Without the power of the MLS, I can’t think of a reason to use a Realtor – whether buying or selling.

All the “services” they provide can be had either for free or for a small fee; and totally unbiased.

Can’t figure out the paperwork? Use a lawyer. Not sure if the house is worth the price? Do your own research or pay someone a few hundred bucks to tell you.