If you want to make a debate lets bring all the people in the Transactions into this. How about the appraiser that charges you $350 to guess at the value. The Real Estate Attorney that charges you to move documents. Lets talk about Mortgage Brokers and Retail VS wholesale lenders. Let’s talk about Builders.

Not one of my clients has lost money in a down or up market. Do I as a Realtor make to much NO. You are not required to pay me. There are FSBO and your free to go research your value and you can go and hire an appraiser. But you need to make sure the appraiser has all the information and hopegully make sure they are not using zillow.com to get your value. Oh by the way make sure you check that he is not using short sales and forclosures as comps.

There is alot invloved in Real Estate and there is alot of needed knowledge. Havingsaid all that do we need reform? Yes ! Do we need to pick on just the Realtors ? NO ! I am all for change and happy in the market we have now. The reason I am happy is that now we can dunp idiots that got alot of people in trouble. We can now flush out the builders that raped the buyers for the last 10 years.

I just bought another house in 2006 jan. I am not losing money on any of my homes. IS this market bad? NO it is a false market. By a false market we have our so called MBA in the metigation departments that need to return them. I as a Realtor have been helping homeowners try and save thier homes. Free I may add because some Realtor and Mortgae Broker thought it would be cute to put a working family in thier dream home. Sub Prime loans are not bad if you know what your doing. Most do not and should not have use them. Most Realtors don’t know about money in general and don’t know what type of loans are out there.

I know this is all over the place but I have to go and try and tell a bank that they are idiots. Example homeowner is trying to refi to prevent going behind in mortgage. Lender takes app and processes it. Calls an appraisal company they come out take the $350 from the homeowner calls back in 3 days and tells them oh your property is 1/2 what you paid for it. The other one got the appraisal and then had the lender do a review and says it is worth 1/2 of what the appraiser says.

Now they call me. So I take a look and low and behold both appraisers used short sales and forclosures in the appraisal. The Reviewer is using software that uses short sales and foreclosures to total values. The mitgation department MBA says they can’t help the home owner change the terms. So they would rather have $300,000 in the house now they have to spend another $150,000 to foreclose sit on it for 1 year then hire another company to watch it and then clean it hire a Realtor to sell it now the bank has about $500,00 0 in the home and going to sell it for $250,000.

Which brings me back to how appraisers are comming up so short on appraisals and breaking the rules of appraisals. Which brings us back to the idiot brokers and the dead beat boards and let’s not forget the very very crooked MLS system. How does this play you ask ? Realtor A sells a bank property and puts it in the MLS system as a good sale Realtor B does a short sale (By the way any Realtor that list a property as a short sale should lose thier lisence) and puts it in the MLS as a good sale. Now you have Realtor C doing a listing and she uses the Two sales as comps and tells the homeowner thats the value. The lie becomes a truth. Now you have the appraisers doing the same thing and then you have zillow marketing the lies. Now we have homes worth more in parts than as a whole. Would love to know when something became worth less than what it cost to make.
I had appraiser give me my clients money back after I told him since we could not refi the house because the his appraislal we were going to send it to the insurance company to lower the insurance. He could not get the concept that his work said the value of the home was now below by thousands and thousands of dollars what the insurance companies said it would cost to rebuild the home if it burned to the ground.

So in short while I take my over payed job and go try and save a few people and hopefully amke some changes to the process why not really do some good and beat on the process. Banks make more by selling wholesale to the retail lenders and mortgage brokers who add sometimes 3% or more on to that and appraisers who told everyone during the boom the property was worth more than it really was and the Realtors who said they knew what they were doing and The builders who started selling to speculaters and did not tell the buyers !!!
Shame on the Realtors who did not check the TAX records for the clients to let them know the builder was selling to speculaters. Thats how you know the end is near.

This article did not “fail to mention or gloss over” anything. With all due respect, your business arrangement and what you personally net, is unfortunately of no relevance to the justification of commission.

Value of a good or service can not be predicated upon the deal you cut with your broker. It certainly can not be predicated upon your expenses in their entirety. That is wholly unrealistic and borderline absurd.

I, and no Seller I know, would have any problem with an accurate amortization of your expenses as they SPECIFICALLY relate to their respective property. That is to say, that I doubt all of the aforementioned fees when appropriated to the time spent on a SPECIFIC property, amount to all that much.

You ask…”With agents doing eight deals a year on average, how much are we really making?”….again with all due respect, the consumer does not care and it is not relevant to the value of services rendered. I doubt many if any Sellers at all are told they are being charged what they are because the agent needs to pay for gas and stamps.

I would advise two things right away based upon your comment.

1. Find a new broker…paying 50% is nuts

2. If you are only doing 8 deals per year and you say your average net is just $3,906.00…you may want to find another line of work. Seems like a ton of aggravation to go through to net just $32,000 per year.

3. Lastly, as an independent contractor everything you listed above should be tax deductible..so you may want to find a good accountant.

In any event, The consumer could really care less and the sooner most agents realize that commission is not life support the better.

Don’t worry though..I am sure it won’t be long until the next comet comes!

Let’s put some numbers to this. Say a home sold for $250,000 with a 6% commission. The commission is $15,000 split 50/50. $7,500 for the listing agent,
minus 20% for the Broker leaves $6,000. Subtract from that 7% for corporate and we get $5,580. Not bad for a few hours of actual work, right. But wait, I need to set aside 30% of that for Uncle Sam. That leaves me with $3,906. And what about office, desk, administration fees, whatever your Broker calls them. They can range from $500-$2,000 a month in our area. Of course the lower the fees the agent pays, the higher the percent of the commission the Broker gets.
And let’s not forget Association dues. National, state and local realtor boards all require membership fees. There are also fees for websites, cell phones, computers, MLS membership, higher auto insurance because I drive clients around in my car looking at properties. Then there is continuing education, license renewal and let’s not forget the “gas and stamps” mentioned in your article, plus flyers, postcards, mailers, office stationery, etc…

With agents doing eight deals a year on average, how much are we really making?

Thank you for your comment. I think we all need to strive to become beacons of light for the consumer.

Change is inevitable and exciting. As a Realtor myself, I work in what seems like the most inefficient business environment you could possibly imagine. I wish more of us were open to new ideas, alternate concepts and discussion about how to create a better system for consumers and the professionals that represent them.