Here's a dirty secret:<p>You don't need a real estate agent, particularly a buy-side agent. Look at the housing markets in the UK and Australia. Buy-side agents have never existed there, and are a particularly odd quirk of the U.S. market. When you close the deal you typically have a banker there, and ideally a lawyer. So what does the agent actually do? Drive you around to houses you have already previewed online?<p>Being a real estate agent is no different than being an investment banker or a consultant. Realtors are deal-driven and therefore, not a true advocate for clients. If a client pays more for a house than they should, then the buy-side and sell-side agents make more commission. If a house sells quickly then it is less hassle for the sell-side agent. So to be fair, there is something of a balancing dynamic to the market, and there are surely good and skilled agents out there, but don't count your real estate agent in your corner. Their interests are not necessarily aligned with yours.
I'm confused. Pretty much all startups have their engineers, designers, managers, etc. as W2 employees, no? Having employees isn't the issue, it's having a huge employee count that needs to scale with the scale of the business, rather than operating a huge business from a (relatively) small staff.
As a first-time homebuyer in the Bay Area, would the HN hivemind recommend Redfin, or using a traditional agent?<p>I was at an open house a couple of weeks ago, and decided to ask the (seller's) agent about her experience. She was young, and said that she had 'bought' only 1 house so far. It was listed at $1.6M, and her client got it for $1.84M. And it was the only bid..... I was like huh? You encouraged him to bid more, and he ended up paying 15% over? That's not something to be proud of. So I'm a bit leery of agents now.
> Mr. Kelman argues that full-time employees allow him to offer better customer service. Redfin gives its agents salaries, health benefits, 401(k) contributions and, for the most productive ones, Redfin stock, none of which is standard for contractors. Redfin currently employs more than 1,000 agents. . . . Now with his company on a stronger footing, Mr. Kelman says he believes his approach has been vindicated.<p>I love Redfin. But it's sad that the market forces Kelman to justify his business model only on the basis of what doing right by employees does for his own bottom line.
This is also something Paul Hawken touches on in "Growing a Business", along with a suggestion (IIRC) not to pay sales staff a commission:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Business-Paul-Hawken/dp/0671671642" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Business-Paul-Hawken/dp/06716...</a>
As an aside: I had a really positive experience buying with Redfin in the Denver metro. Their agents were as helpful as any I've ever worked with, they have good online tools, and we got roughly $5k back from the buyer's 3% commission when we closed.<p>I would recommend them to anyone looking to buy a house in a metro that they service.
I thought most realtors earned commission? Does the company keep the commission here then instead? It's an interesting idea, I think I would trust one of their theoretical agents more since they aren't directly incentivized to get me to buy a more expensive property.
You have the file concerning the property, with all the information about it, including a photo gallery. Location (GPS lat/lon) and ask price are certainly important filter fields.<p>You may want to hire an hourly-rate admin clerk to prepare all the information and file it into a long list of web-based databases.<p>Next, you may want to hire a person to show potential buyers around. So, an hourly-rate "showaroundist".<p>So, that means that you are dealing with two hourly-rate persons doing some work for you to market your property.<p>If you are incapable of organizing this, in that case, you are probably incapable of organizing anything at all, and in that case I wonder how you managed to get the money to buy the property that you are selling now in the first place?<p>In other words, someone who agrees to pay a percentage value of his property to a real-estate agent, is simply someone who will not be capable of making enough money to own a property in the first place.
Hey, you're supposed to incorrectly call it sharing economy. Hmm... somebody sharing a car with you... somebody driving you around... sound like it's the same thing... Offering a service is obviously the same as offering access to a resource... except it's not so why do online newspapers call it sharing economy? Do they want to show off their lack of competence that much?
Does anyone else find it odd that houses have agents that take huge fees/commissions but other financial products can simply be bought and sold in a way easier manner?