Buyer's questions can be better answered yourself, most sellers agents are unable to answer any questions and they'll have to relay most questions to you anyways, once again, my experience.
Open houses are more about generating leads for the agent then they are about showing your house.
Negotiating with buyers can be done yourself easily.
Working with the title company isn't something real estate agents do, not around here anyways. My lawyer handled all the title stuff. Plus what sort of "work" does an agent need to do with the title company?
Handing off the keys? Seriously? That is done at closing and shouldn't cost $5,000+.
>You (the buyer) schedules the inspection, you can ask the real estate agent to do it for you but it's a simple phone call.
Yes obviously you can do that. But you have to take the time to research the different companies a little to find a good one and you have to be there while the inspection is done.
>...I don't understand the contractors statement, a contractor is not a usual part of a real estate transaction, at least in my experience?
In selling, often there are either things that come up on inspection that need to be fixed or improvements that are done to make the property sell better - new paint, new carpeting, etc. Obviously a seller can do this, but it takes time to get bids and to be at the house to let them in, etc.
Yes, obviously this can be done, and yes you can also take the time to look at a number of listings and write the ad copy if you choose.
>...Buyer's questions can be better answered yourself, most sellers agents are unable to answer any questions and they'll have to relay most questions to you anyways, once again, my experience.
A good agent can save you time here.
>...Open houses are more about generating leads for the agent then they are about showing your house.
One way or the other, you need someone there during an open house. Either you have to be there or you need to pay someone to be there.
>...Negotiating with buyers can be done yourself easily.
Obviously a seller can negotiate themselves and maybe they are as good at negotiating and know as much about the local market as people who do this everyday and maybe they know the agents to avoid. Though maybe it isn't that uncommon that the seller hasn't sold many properties and is better off having someone else help them.
>...Working with the title company isn't something real estate agents do, not around here anyways. My lawyer handled all the title stuff. Plus what sort of "work" does an agent need to do with the title company?
Different situations in different parts of the country I guess.
>...Handing off the keys? Seriously?
In this part of the country, it is done later - agent meets the person at the house. Again, no reason you couldn't do it, but it is time out of your day.
>...That is done at closing and shouldn't cost $5,000+.
Not sure where the number comes from - there is no need to put words in my mouth. Simply listing some of the the things the agent did when my place was sold. If I had to take time off of work to try and handle all these details, it would have cost me a lot more than the commission the agent got.
>you have to take the time to research the different companies a little to find a good one and you have to be there while the inspection is done.
You should ALWAYS be there when inspection is done. Always. You're paying for it after all. Research? Yes, you should regardless. I couldn't imagine not being there and/or not researching. Real estate agents are useless in this step. How does this have to do with an agent other than "can use the phone?"
Anything about the contractor, lol, yeah, doesn't happen in real life...
>it takes time to get bids and to be at the house to let them in, etc.
Nothing about a real estate transaction has anything to do with this.
> you can also take the time to look at a number of listings and write the ad copy if you choose
???? !!! ????? Wat!? LOL
How old are you!?!
>A good agent can save you time here.
LOL!!!! Yeah, this doesn't happen. Have you ever talked to a sellers agent??? LOL!!! Asking a basic question of a sellers agent = idk. I would laugh if it wasn't sad... Actually, I laugh anyways. If it isn't on the MLS, they don't have a clue.
>One way or the other, you need someone there during an open house. Either you have to be there or you need to pay someone to be there.
PROTIP - Your agent doesn't schedule an open house for you, she schedules an open house for her. Open houses are a lead generator, nothing more.
>agent meets the person at the house.
Wat!? At closing the keys are hand over. There isn't any other way. You're there anyways. Give me a break that agents try to justify their cost that ways??!!
$5,000+ comes from 3% of 200,000, which is $6,000.
Come on!! Give me a break!! I don't even hate agents but, for Christ sake, try harder!!
>...At closing the keys are hand over. There isn't any other way.
What you mean to say is that you can't imagine that things could be done differently than how it was done where you are located. That pretty much sums up every comment you made here...
How do you get a mortgage without a lawyer? Our bank required the lawyer to do the title search, title settlement, and title recording - according to my closing disclosure, which I just consulted.
Might be different in different areas. In places I've lived, the title company handles all of this - the seller doesn't hire a lawyer - a large title company likely has a corporate lawyer in case something comes up, but otherwise they have people whose job is it to do the search and put together the closing documents.
> start the homeowner's insurance purchase/quotes during the option period to ensure that any related surprises here will enable you to walk away during the option period than trying to deal with killing the deal with the much-higher earnest money amount at stake.
Wow, this is great advice and something I would never think of doing.
When I was buying my house every time I asked a seller's agent a question about a house their answer was "I don't know." Every single damn time! If it wasn't written on the MLS they don't have a clue. That's even assuming the seller's agent was even physically there for the showing, only a few were.
My loan agent also told us that the taxes listed on the MLS were almost always flat out wrong so he always has to ignore the MLS and call the town when drafting up mortgages. I can't help but wonder if that's not so accidental. The taxes listed on the MLS for the house I ended up buying were wrong, for what its worth. Two municipals tax my house and the MLS only listed the tax for one of them.
>A realtor can still walk a property to perform a market analysis, which is still more accurate than an automated valuation
Wow, how on earth do you know that!? That's a pretty bold statement and I don't really see anything to justify it at all. You start with "algorithm aren't as accurate as traditional appraisers" and then conclude from that "real estate agents (who aren't appraisers!) can give a more accurate market analysis than algorithms." There's a big leap there.
Even if this was true that real estate agents do a better job than automatic algorithms it's still kind of irrelevant because an appraiser cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $300-$600 where as an agent costs $5,000-$10,000+. If you need an appraisal you hire an appraiser, not an agent.
So? Real estate agents aren't appraisers and shouldn't do "official" appraisals because of misaligned incentives (among other reasons).
Appraisals are kind of weird anyways, they are only an somewhat educated guess until someone actually buys the property and they are pretty individually subjective. My friend had 3 different appraisers come to her house and do three different appraisals and they all varied by quite a bit and one was absurdly high, much higher than the others, and extremely unrealistic (IMO). Appraisers also have information that algorithms don't because they actually go to the house and view the property with their own eyes. They can take into account better the condition of the property and "soft," more subjective inputs that you can only tell by actually viewing the property. It's not really directly comparable to an algorithm since there's just a subjective bend to the whole process and there's much more information available to appraisers.
Not only that but when the bank does an appraisal for a mortgage the appraiser's job is only to justify the selling price. They start with the agreed upon selling price and they use data to justify it, they don't go into it blind, they consider and analyze the agreement of sale as part of the valuation. Zillow obviously can't take that info account as Zillow doesn't have that information. So you're comparing apples (a market analysis based on public information) to oranges (a justification of a privately agreed upon sale price).
An appraisal is also cheap, especially compared to a real estate agent. Ours was a flat $425.
First two minutes of that video states the issue is limited to the case where the agent represents both the buying and selling parties which is only legal in canada.
I'm not canadian. I dont know how commonplace this is. But as an american it sounds pretty foolish of someone to accept a deal on your next mortgage with someone who openly controls both parties.
Double-ended deals are legal in some US states e.g. California, and they are indeed an opportunity for breach of fiduciary duty. The way it works is that a crooked agent would get the seller to sign a listing contract that stipulates 3% to whatever agent represents the buyer irrespective of who that agent was working for. Then present only double-ended offers, or lowball outside offers to the seller -- hiding any higher offers that came through buyer's agents. And naive sellers have been defrauded this way.
The seller's defense is simple: Refuse to sign any listing contract that stipulates more than a 1% commission to a buyer's agent that is in any financial way affiliated with the listing agent's office. 1% being roughly in line with the actual effort required from the listing agent to deal with buyer-side coordination as well.
Such a stipulation doesn't quite close the door on collusion through favor trading, among agents in the local old-boy-and-girl network. But it's enough to shield you the seller from the grosser frauds out there.
"An attitude I can do whatever I can is not a healthy way of relationship." - they are Amazon, they can do whatever they want; they do this stuff all the time. Arbitrary shutdowns, clueless "support" staff, lack of communication, meaningless replies, seizing funds, and general unethical behavior is par for the course with Amazon.
