choicea has some nice graphic effects, but the long two column list of features made my eyes glaze over. Some way to organize those into related groups might help.

I don’t see real estate agents going the way of the dodo.
I use a 7 dollar flat fee stock broker, but there still are plenty of full service brokers out there.

I like you Ira, but I do want to pick on this comparison just a little, because I’ve seen it a few times now. This is not really a fair comparison because the markets are extremely different.

The creation of discount brokers actually expands the number of investors in the stock market. The top 1% would be in stocks regardless of whether discount brokers existed. These people have the net worth to pay someone to manage it for them. But what about everybody else? The warehouse worker getting $17 an hour can’t afford to deal through a traditional broker, but he can make a few trades a year at $7 each. In other words, the discount stock broker expands the market. It may take business from traditional brokers as well, but that was not the intent.

The internet technology enabling better FSBO is not creating a newer larger market. A little under 70% of families own their home. It was true in 1990 and it’s true today. The costs of entry are already so large, and the frequency of transaction so low, that it’s inconceivable FSBO could create new buyers/sellers that never existed before. This means that nearly every house sold FSBO is a house no sold by an agent.

I think good honest agents will survive. Some – who change strategies to flat fees or hourly rates for instance – may even thrive. It is more work to do a FSBO, and people do relatively few housing transactions in their lifetime. All of these things will still encourage many sellers to find capable agents. Just not as frequently as 15 years ago. Here’s hoping that most of the chaff is separated quickly.

paying at the 65th percentile is a good thing… given the average pay is the 50th percentile… MSFT’s goal is to set pay where 65 people in similar jobs in the tech industry are paid less and 35 are paid more… in otherwords above average. And the benefits rock.

On another topic you said:

For the love of your favorite entity, ALOT is not a friggin’ word! Look it up! It’s “A LOT”. A is a word, as well as a letter, and LOT is a word. ALOT is not a word, it’s an indication of idiocy!

Now you say:

Maybe Ray P over at 500realty.net can come in and buy ALOT of those houses. It sounds just like the deals he’s looking for; RE investments which have already lost, and will continue to loose, value.

It should be “lose”, not “loose”. Can we all stop correcting peoples’ grammar and spelling now?

eat that, microserfs.

Realitor = One whom deals in reality.

My husband is an electrician who works mostly in Snohomish county and this is exactly the story that began in the last couple of months. Housing construction workers are being laid off and builders are stopping work on some homes in the middle of construction to try to stop losses because they are finding that they can’t sell even at cost, but have to take a loss to get the properties off their hands. I imagine that not all homes are selling at a loss, but some definitely are selling at a loss already.

This is something that is often not mentioned when MSFT pay scale is mentioned: the pay is NOT for a 40 hour week in reality, but for many more hours. I know people who have left Microsoft because they didn’t have any time for their families and they found they could really make more money per actual hours worked somewhere else.

Moe

As far as I know, MSFT pays top rate right now (well, as of last year anyway).

I am pretty certain the pay philosophy at Microsoft is to target their pay at 65th percentile in the industry. I’ve hired plenty of people at the pay levels you are talking about and most have taken a pay cut. The way Microsoft got plenty of cash was by not distributing it liberally…

I moved to Seattle recently and have been following the RE market here. During that period prices have declined here, but just a little bit only – 5% or less in the neighborhoods I looked at. For a relocating person like me, there are two problems. Almost every metro area is in a housing slump, so it is a hard sell for my current home. And housing in Seattle is expensive – to put it mildly ;-) So I would lose both ways :-(
About the MSFT euphoria, it is true that they are hiring at a steady pace. But I don’t see how these people can move in and buy a 500K home right away. The salary figures quoted by Markor are accurate (from my 1st and 2nd knowledge of MSFT hiring). But if one buys a 500K home with 20% down, the mortgage/insurance/utilities will eat up more than 50% of one’s pay. I don’t know how many people are comfortable with that (I am not).

Also, I bought an sold some properties FSBO, it works fine since we had State Mo & Escow in Kirkland do all of the paperwork for us. However, RE agents will be around just like full-service brokers.

this is fairly obvious. if an industry gets paid for each sale and the number of sales declines, the number of people the industry can support decreases. sales in many parts of the country are at 50% of their peak volume.

so, the pie is smaller.

FSBO may also take some market share from Realtors as people try to get out as much money as possible, but it doesn’t seem too likely to me. banks, those being foreclosed upon, and people selling because of a move will all use Realtors because their goal is to sell the place, not to host open houses.

then again, maybe we’ll have an increase in auctions, which don’t involve Realtors.

Actually I think you can, and this may be a case of penny-wise, pound-foolish. An effective marketing program (including a realistic price) is the key to selling a house quickly, and since carrying costs can easily run to the hundreds of dollars per week I think the ~$600 fee charged by places like mls4owners may easily be better than “free”, since it’s likely to generate a lot more traffic to your home.

I WOULDN’T WORK FOR MSFT EITHER

I watched their $50K salary for program managers freeze since the 1980s.

But the stock options will bail you out. Not.

The stock options may not pan out. However, the last two people I know who got hired there started at $110K (sr. database developer) and $105K (new program manager), not counting benefits.

It’s great to see all the alternatives. In a twist, it could end up being the crash that causes the mass exodus to FSBO. I always figured only companies started during the boom (w€hen clients were plentiful) would be able to compete. However, it’s now become clear to me that the massively lower overhead of online market makers will cause the masses to flock to them during the crash instead.

To any real estate agents out there, this isn’t meant as flamebait, but… if you lose your job in the next couple years, don’t wait for it to come back. Spend your time and money learning a new skill. It’ll pay for itself.

I watched their $50K salary for program managers freeze since the 1980s.

But the stock options will bail you out. Not.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/58319-congress-expresses-holiday-spirit-by-waiving-debt-forgiveness-tax

one more barrier to foreclosure has been removed.

talk about moral hazard.

On another note, this Christmas eve I was talking with a concrete guy I know who said that some developments he was working on have been shut down because the builder hasn’t sold any of the houses built so far. This was up in the Mt.Vernon/Arlington area. The builder has apparently lowered the price by 15k on the existing houses but hasn’t had movement. It was amazing to hear a ground zero account of the affect of this whole thing.

The problem is that those people don’t really exist anymore. I recently moved two friends that started at MSFT from 98 – 01. I was amazed. These folks were moving into postage stamp size townhouses or single family homes that they could barely afford. These were mid level employees with plenty of experience in Tech – not entry level. The stock boom at Microsoft has been over for several years yet agents continue to talk about these new millionaires like it was 1998. The truth is that every job MSFT has offered me in the last two years is at a third less than a comparable tech company. I get to hear about how valuable the stock is but I’ve been around long enough to know this isn’t true.