Posted on 05/21/2012 8:43:21 AM PDT by C19fan
Real estate agents are getting out of the profession in California ---- except in Southwest Riverside County, according to the California Department of Real Estate and the Southwest Riverside County Association of Realtors.
A housing crunch left real estate agents faced with selling houses for less than what homeowners owed in mortgages, working with lenders suddenly terrified to give out loans, and otherwise battling headwinds that dramatically reduced their sales.
(Excerpt) Read more at nctimes.com ...
“I put real estate agents in the same league as our politicians and pimps”
...that’s nice. Put us all in your little “pimps” club. I’ve saved clients thousands of dollars via offer and inspection negotiations. People simply don’t know how to negotiate real estate. I just closed a deal where the sellers refused to have a moisture issue in their crawl space taken care of for my buyers. I told them that if they don’t fix it for us, they’ll have to disclose to the next buyers. We backed out even though my buyers wanted to stay in. In 2 weeks they called me and begged for my buyers to come back, as I figured. They not only fixed the crawl space but I got the price down another 10K from 290K. When a house goes back on the market it loses value because people don’t want to buy something that someone else backed out of. Too many unanswered questions. There are a lot more details but I wouldn’t want you to try and
comprehend too much in one sitting.
Nobody has to have an agent to sell a house. You can hang out a sign and try to sell it yourself. No commission necessary.
The Economist did a good article on US Real Estate trade a couple of weeks ago.
Bottom line: in the US we pay too much for real estate transactions. More than in Europe / Canada etc. as a per centage.
They were surprised that the internet did not destroy the MLS monopoly and theorize the we enjoy the idea of paying more to access the agent as a partner. Go figure.
Mike
Good news. There was a time no so long ago in SoCal that every little mother around was getting a RE license. It was like Tupperware parties...........
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