[C19fan]

I put real estate agents in the same league as our politicians and pimps. What other item does one buy that requires the use of an "agent"? I remember during the housing bubble in CA and seeing lots of agents driving around in fancy luxury cars earning tens of thousands of dollars for doing nothing.

[KarlInOhio]

A lot of "real estate agents" are part timers with a full time job who took a couple of classes, took a test and are now selling houses. You could do that when banks would give loans to anyone with a pulse and prices were galloping upward. It's not so easy when people can't sell because they are under water with their mortgages and the rest don't want to hear that their demand is $50,000 above the market rate in the neighborhood and will have to be dropped. It was a lot easier when the realtor could say "$500,000? I think we can get $650,000 for it. Now give me my 6%."

[albie]

“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.

[CaptainK]

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.

[cicero2k]

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.

[2ndDivisionVet]

IIRC there was a time when every 8th adult in California was a licensed real estate agent. Hahahahaha! Maybe those that remain should learn Mandarin and Cantonese....

[doorgunner69]

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...........