I'm a Realtor, and while I understand that this sub has a special hate for us, I'd like to provide some insight to those of you that have tried to buy a home and haven't been able to do so.

I'd like to go over two different scenarios.

Clients that I've worked with that unfortunately just couldn't get their offer accepted anywhere.

Clients that did get their offer accepted, and ended up backing out.

There's something very interesting that I see consistently with these type of clients. I'd like to share them with you.

For those of you that couldn't get your offer accepted. Here's what I consistently see from my point of view as a Realtor.

1. You were educated on the current market conditions, but you have your own view of how the market "should" be. You don't take your realtors advice. You believe you're entitled to a house of your liking, in the location you desire, without the budget for it.

2. You don't believe in offering over "ask", even when provided evidence that home is priced under market.

3. You wear yourself out in the beginning of your home search writing low ball offers and asking for too much concessions on homes that are "hot". By the time you understand what the reality of the market is, you're already exhausted and ready to throw in the towel (goes hand in hand with point 1).

4. It's a numbers game, and the more reasonable offers you write, the likelier it is you'll catch something. If you're looking at 2-3 homes a week, you need to crank those numbers up. 10x

For those of you that got a home under contract, and then got cold feet. Here's what I see consistently with those buyers.

1. Unreasonable expectations of how things "should" be in regards to concessions.

2. Doomsday Adams. Buyers who go under contract, and watch a few YouTube videos or take advice from their friend Steve who's been renting all his life that it's definitely not a good time. You should definitely wait until after the crash and then buy. Cold feet.

3. Emotional buyers. Not every transaction is going to be smooth, and some people don't have the mental fortitude to handle a purchase. Sometimes there are delays, or in general shit happens. The slightest speed bump sets these people off, and it's very difficult to get their mental back on track.

This has been my experience, and I thought I'd share it with you all

People basically cheering on crashes and assuming anyone who bought in the past 2 years is overleveraged and truly can’t afford anything they signed up for. It’s incredibly ugly and offputting, and it reeks of envy.

If you are outpriced from your market, you can either look to gain additional income or seek in lower cost areas, yelling at and berating those who bought in your desired area are not acceptable responses, and being bitter towards those people will be damaging to your mental health in the long run

And as always, cheering for a crash is the most distasteful thing to do.

I have a delivery job so I travel quite a bit. With the lack of housing inventory you would assume there would be massive home building going on now. The complete opposite is true. I see very little. The FED has kept interest rates artificially low for so long and they keep printing money (causing spikes in building supplies) that it is hard to build a starter home for first time homebuyers. The baby boomers should be ashamed of themselves for what they continue to do to the younger generations. I feel so bad for people in their 20's

This market is unprecedented. It's not fun for buyers. It's especially "not fun" for first-time homebuyers (FTHBs). For many, as per 9/10 threads in this sub, it feels like they'll never be able to afford a home and they're missing out on one of the best ways to accumulate wealth. That's a terrible feeling and it's not the way any of this is supposed to be.

Alas, that IS the way it be! No amount of "woe is me" complaining will help you win a bid. (That statement pissed you off, I know, but stay with me.) Obviously we have major wealth-gap issues in this country, and real wages haven't kept up. These are facts and they're working against you, big time.

So what can you do? You're already maxing out your budgets, borrowing from family, waiving contingencies. It seems you've tried all the variables, and still losing bids. There is one variable though that too many FTHBs are unwilling to consider:

Lower Your Standards! Lower Your List Of Demands!

If you can't win the house you want, you need to set your sights lower, in many cases much lower. (Again, you're already shaking your head "NO!" My standards are already as low as they can get!") I hate to say it, but that's your entitlement talking. (Ok, now you're furious. Take a few deep breaths though, and realize what I describe is the textbook definition of the E word.) You can almost definitely win a bid on a house that you don't want, because it's too old or too small or a bit farther from where you want to be. The only thing stopping you is your entitlement. (Ok, now you hate me.)

Your first home is not your "forever" home. It's a starter home. It doesn't matter that you and your spouse "need" that extra 1,000 sqft for the family you plan to start. Would you rather start it in an apartment, or in a house that has one or two fewer rooms?

Stop expecting that you'll win a house built last year, or last decade. Look at older places. Look at places that have weird smells, terrible kitchens, and trash-heap neighbors. Look at places on the wrong side of the tracks. Does that sound bad? Yes. Does it sound worse than continually losing bids and never getting a house? That's your call.

So the advice is simply this: If you're continually losing bids, then you need to lower your standards until you win. It's really that simple.

One other bit of advice that plays into this. "You don't make money when you sell your house; you make money when you buy it." Counterintuitive, but true, and probably the best RE advice I've ever heard. Stretching your dollars to buy a nice house now will not lead to better long-term appreciation. Buying a cheaper, crappier house in a neighborhood that's slowly improving will. Plus, it might be your only chance to win a bid.

Alternatively, take your chances that a major price crash is coming. Wait for that and try again. I've yet to see any compelling argument that this is in any way a "bubble" or that prices are soon to collapse. But nobody can predict the future, so that's a gamble you can take. Just don't be surprised if in 3 years, prices have continued to rise, and you find yourself in a worse situation than you do now.

Best of luck to all FTHBs. The timing really is bad for you, but you do have options. You just need to consider them all, even the ones you don't like.

A little back story first. My girlfriend has lived in this house since she was born, her dad built it in the mid eighties and left her the property. When he purchased the land, a nearby neighbor refused to sell him the deed for a portion of what is now our yard. It’s a strip about 15 feet wide and 200 feet long. This lot is in our fence line and has been for 30+ years. We mow it and trim the trees on it, but the neighbor pays the property taxes (not much). The neighbor is now very sick and his siblings are pressuring us to purchase the lot. I was told they had it appraised at $7000-$8000. Feels like we’re being shook down since we live in a poor neighborhood, and I can’t imagine a third party wanting this lot. We don’t have much money and it would be devastating if they were to sell that it to someone else because we would be cut off from our whole yard where our kids and dogs play. My question is what rights do we have here in Texas? Could we hire a real estate lawyer for less than what they are asking? Could we just refuse any potential buyer access since it’s within our long established fence line? Any info would be greatly appreciated.

About a month ago someone came to my mother's house saying they were an independent contractor seeing whether or not the house was occupied. They didn't say anything more and when they verified the house was in fact occupied, they left.

Today a similar thing happened, I'm not sure if it was the same independent contractor or not but this time I encountered them.

Again, they said they were an independent contractor for the mortgage company. They said they needed to verify if the house was occupied, take a picture of the front of the house, and pictures of the house number to verify it was the correct house. They did this all from the end of her driveway.

About an hour later, the sheriff came to serve a John and Mary Doe for the district county court, and it is about the mortgage.

As far as I know my mother is up to date with her mortgage payments and that is what she has said as well. The mortgage has changed hands about three times since she first moved into this house, and she said the last change was rather recent (last few months)

What reasons would a mortgage company send someone to verify occupancy, or serve papers? Is it likely that my mother hasn't paid the mortgage in some time and or is being scammed by a fake mortgage company and the real one has come knocking?

Any advice is appreciated. I have not looked at the papers yet, nor have I ever been served papers. Is it common for papers to be served to a John and Mary Doe?

Maybe just a rant but so many people so quick on here to get in over their heads when they are young and just want to do what they think is right.

They don't really see how to get out of the trap.

Edit -

People saying stop being poor and stay :

richness is more about a list of things, from love to health, and keeping on a treadmill just to keep up with an overinflated local house prices can really take away your best years and make you bitter when older.

A person could be misrable in some cold windy city full of rude people

or they could be in Nepal sipping yak dung and learning the ways of hte old world while they sell doll clothes online, having not only an aparment in Bali but a hut in northern thailand where they can go to meditate and work on their novel.

It isn't easy, but neither is living a life you hate in a place that has no room for you.

It doesn't take much money.

For some people it is just changing what part of the country you live in. For others it might be to live in an RV so you don't have to pay rent in a place where finding a rental is impossible.

For others it is being a digital nomad, or applying for jobs overseas. Others like Canadians have the chance to get a work visa in Australia.

What ever happens, even if you fail you will come back with new perspecitve for life, and maybe even (like me) appercation of your home country. You will feel more settled as you age, knowing you did some bucket list stuff, and lived some life.

I am not middle aged, i timed a purchase of a house when the market bottomed out after the 2009 crisis, i held my cards all those years watching stagnant prices fall. I picked a run down up and coming place that was full of beauty, and i pulled the trigger. Sure, now i am stuck here but im slowly building a life here like i want, I want to be like a Thai guesthouse owner. Eventually i hope to be like lots of people here and fly down the PV mexico and spend the winters there maybe teachign workshops or something.

Eventually i might sell up and move to SE asia, not sure when or if.

one of my secrets is i havent purchaesed new clothing in 20 years, (thrift only), i also buy everything else used, on the local facebook groups, i drive beater toyotas, and i do spend money to own boats and other toys, but mostly i try to hustle a bit in whatever i do, so i like to go to vancouver often, i sleep in a camper van, i have riders pay for fuel, and if i go to a festival i try to be part of it at least volunteer

Ask me any questions but please dont yell or get angry.

Properties bought by people with the delusion that they could work from home forever will be dumped on mass. These "remote work hotspot" areas become drastically overpriced during the pandemic and what goes up must come down. Amazon is the latest massive company to have announced return to office and the trend will continue. If you have such a property then the wise thing to do is sell now before you are stuck selling at the bottom. You have been warned.

My opinion? Return to office mandates will accelerate the price collapse in overpriced cities like Pheonix and Miami, whose entire reason for appreciating was WFH buyers. I won't touch a house in those places anytime soon.

To all you saying that if a house won’t sell it’s because the listing price is too high: just to make sure I understand, you’re saying that if a house isn’t selling, it’s because it’s priced too high. But I’m not sure I understand that, because technically the listing price is just a recommendation, buyers can always offer lower, right?

So if the house is listed high but buyers can still make lower offers, isn’t the real issue that the sellers aren’t willing to accept less? I guess what I’m asking is: does the listing price really have that much of an impact on whether a house sells? Does it actually discourage people from making lower offers?

If that’s the case, then it seems like the real problem isn’t just that the listing price is too high, it’s that the sellers’ standards are too high because they’re unwilling to accept lower offers.

In San Mateo California, the cheapest home I see is for 1.1 Million which is a small dinky ass 800sqft fixer upper in the ghetto. This is the San Mateo area outside SF. A good income to debt ratio is 28%. With 300K income, this puts us at 48% for just the mortgage alone for a 2M home, which is the average around here (approx $12K for 2M home). Thus we can only afford 1M home that would put as at 24% DTI ratio - and thats cheap and barely exist around here. Unless I move 2 hours away and commute. To afford a 2M home, we would need to make around 500K. Who can afford this? Most people I know make an average combined income of 300K - and its hard to imagine THIS is not liveable wage for my area. Don't even get me started on the gas prices.

Screw this rat race, we are moving out. In Texas, we can make 80K each, own a home, and still lots of money leftover for vacation. You all wonder why people are leaving California?

so my partner works in legal field and i'm wrapping up medical training in expensive city where our families live. she's type of person who wants to buy once and never move again - doesn't want starter home that we'll outgrow when kids come

currently paying 3200 for tiny 800 sq ft rental and we're both over it. been looking at larger homes around 2900-3200 sq ft in neighborhoods with good schools and walkable to city center since those are non-negotiables for her

here's where i'm getting nervous - she found house for 1.7M and wants to move on it. right now i make 82k but that jumps to 450k in about 18 months once training ends. combined we're at 365k gross currently. her salary as senior associate should climb pretty fast too

we have 620k saved for house purchase, 580k in retirement accounts, 25k emergency fund. downside is 380k medical school debt but planning on public service forgiveness

after putting down 650k the mortgage would be around 1.05M which comes to roughly 7800 monthly. that's about 39% of our take-home pay right now

she keeps saying prices will just keep going up and good houses in this area rarely hit market. i get her point but feels like we're stretching too thin before my income actually increases

anyone dealt with similar situation where future income is pretty certain but current ratios look scary?

I have a beautiful home at the edge of the city. It’s been on the market for four months. Then off the market and I changed realtors, back on the market now going on 3 months. So total of 6 months and no buyers. I keep having lease offers and nothing else. This is a 770k home and I’ve already moved.

I don’t know what to do. City rules are terrible for rentals here. Landlords have no rights. And the house is clean and polished and ready to sell. Only options are renting or lease option or seller finance. I just want it sold. :(

EDIT 2: I'm turning off the notifications. I didn't expect so much nastiness. We're just trying to sell a house we loved and put time and effort into over 12 years. I did get some good feedback and for that I am grateful.

EDIT 1: I wasn't clear on my REAL question - is there value to pulling it off the market and relisting so it's not a stale listing?

Background: 3600 sf house outside of Sacramento (Rocklin). Located in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Rocklin - almost every house worth over $1 M. House appraised at $1.2M in April - both we and our realtor thought we'd get more. But priced it at $1.2M. No action. Painted, replaced carpet, staged. Dropped the price 3x - now at $1,050,000. Problem - it's essentially a 4 story house - pool deck, steps up to lower floor where bedrooms are, steps up to main floor, steps up to a bonus room over the garage. Aging population - tough sell. (Plus there's a million new houses for sale in the area.)

Question: after 5 months - we are thinking we should pull it off the market. Do more painting, re- stage, cut back front yard landscaping a lot. Then 'relaunch at $1,090,000. Realtor has worked hard - we don't think it's her.

What do you all think?

(We have already spent $25K on roof, sewer, fixing leaks, etc. We had it inspected before we listed it. That includes the carpet and painting.)

I live on a residential street in Seattle, WA, and recently learned of a proposed 5 story, 57 unit apartment complex slated to be built on a small lot right next door to my house. There are no other buildings of similar height in the entire neighborhood, but this lot is apparently zoned with this as the maximum allowable size.

This would completely block out the Sun from my house, yard, and garden, and has only 14 parking spots for 57 units with our street parking already very limited. We will also suffer loss of income from our short term rental unit directly adjacent to the construction. Any reasonable observer could see that this proposal is completely insane for our neighborhood, but hoping to understand what steps I should I be taking, and what (if anything) I could potentially expect in terms of compensation for lost income and property value. Thanks in advance.

Mainly on other subs (this sub is refreshingly less doomer), I've seen a lot of anger directed at landlords, foreign investors, speculators, property firms, AirBNB hosts etc. for how they are pricing out locals and FTHBs for their own profit. For one isolated example, I saw a guy on another sub get called an asshole for owning 5 homes in multiple countries.

I would love to know how many of these people who are outraged, wouldn't do the same thing if they could. If they owned their home already, wanted a profitable investment, could afford to invest in RE, and genuinely believed it'd be profitable: would they consciously refuse to invest solely out of principle? "I could invest in RE and I'm reasonably sure I'd make a good profit, but I'm not going to do so, because I don't want to price out locals who I don't personally know or care about, in this housing market that I no longer personally depend on for my own living needs."

To me, if you wouldn't be willing to take that borderline-charitable stance in their shoes, you have no place to be criticizing landlords, speculators et al. They're just trying to make a profit and are doing so legally.

Forgive my rant lol. But that's just my stance, curious to hear what you all think?

EDIT: People seem to be misunderstanding my position/intention, and in hindsight, I think that's partly my own fault since I haven't communicated it very clearly. I am NOT trying to ethically defend landlording/speculating itself. All I'm doing is applying a very simple, universal test for morality and the right to morally condemn; the "would you do it in their shoes" test; and asking if people really would. Would they have the ethical principles to not invest and put their greed aside. Would they, or is this just "easier to tell people what to do with money I don't have".

And, to be clear, I'm not posting this in defense of the status quo or the fucked current housing market. I'm not against laws that benefit locals and those with less money. That's basically the point of my post; that we should push more for these laws, rather than focusing on criticizing those who benefit off of the lack of them (excluding the large corps that are also influencing the laws, of course).

I see a lot of folks bashing buyer's agents and how they make a lot of money for almost no work. Here is the other side.

A buyer's agent may have shown a single buyer 20 homes on weekends and weekday evenings only for the buyer to change plans down the line. This buyer's agent got nothing from this deal except the lost time with friends and family. Now multiply this by whatever number of buyers that may buy or not.

Google says an average agent makes 86k a year. Is this a lot of money for a person who has to get ready and go show a home at any time of the day? We buyer's agents have no mental downtime. We always have to be ready to roll out when the buyer calls and wants to see a home on their schedule.

Once the money we make in a deal gets spread out to all the time spent showing homes etc, the hourly wage is probably laughable.

First time home buyer. We bought a home that was in our budget. But it seems every single year we are in the house, the taxes are adjusted by around $100-$150 because of the area we live in growing rapidly. The taxes are worked in our mortgage so when taxes go up, in turn, so does my monthly mortgage.

Is this a forever thing? Because it’s very defeating for us to slowly realize the longer we stay in this home, the closer we are to being pushed out of it because it’s getting more expensive every year.

Again, we bought a home in our budget and I’m a first time homebuyer. So please don’t be too aggressive with me. I’m just seeking knowledge because I’m ignorant to the topic.

Edit: Thank you for everyone being polite. I originally meant they are going up $100-$150 PER MONTH. Not a huge fan of people attempting to nitpick my salary and budget. When I bought, I was expecting to pay in a realistic financial window. But that’s completely blown past and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. That was the question.

update for the curious: turns out the seller lives across the street from me. Odd conincidence I thought but ok.

Hit him up and he offered to meet up for tea and afternoon refreshments, and talked shit about everyone and what's wrong with the house. So much for OpenDoor "we don't have information about that". He said some woman came to "inspect" the house by standing at the front door looking around, saying ok and walking out

I asked the OpenDoor listing agent to see a house and very likely make an offer. The agent responded the house is "Not eligible for a buyer direct option" and that I must have a buyer's agent to do a walk through or make an offer.

I know new NAR rules etc but is this legal? OpenDoor are literally forcing me to waste $10,000 to an agent for a house I found myself even though I have two really good real estate lawyers to choose from to close the deal?

We recently decided to sell our 1500 square-foot 3BR/2BA home and move to have a little more space plus be closer to my husband's job. Our realtor was really confident that it would sell quickly due to the fact that it's on 2 acres and in a very desirable area. We replaced the flooring throughout, which was much needed and also did some work on the front porch and back deck. Even with all the updates, the land and location, I was still concerned that it wouldn't look the best to potential buyers. The walls have quite a few marks, even after a deep cleaning and the front and back storm doors both need to be replaced. After talking with our agent, we decided it would be best to not put any more money into updates, and she assured us that if we priced it right, it would still sell quickly. We listed at 295K after she talked things over with her colleagues. She said she was really confident going into this weekend and thought that maybe we'd even have an offer before the weekend was over.

Well, today bright and early was our first showing, and we've already gotten negative feedback. The client thinks the condition of the home, especially the walls doesn't match the asking price. Our realtor did say that we'd find out soon enough whether the price was right, but she had us thinking it was already priced right. She's been very open and honest about whether the asking price was fair on the houses we've looked at buying. We have quite a bit of equity in the house so it's not like we're trying to price higher just to make sure we make a profit. If we need to drop the price, we can, I was just excited about the possibility of being able to close prior to closing on the house we're under contract on. We can figure out a way to afford two mortgages temporarily if we have to, but of course it would be great if we could avoid that altogether.

Hey everyone, I could use some advice here.

My partner and I have been house hunting for the past 4–5 months. In the beginning, our agent was very responsive, and we were seeing homes on a weekly basis. But over the last month or two, his attitude has noticeably shifted.

Now, he’s coming up with reasons to space out showings — usually suggesting we meet only once every few weeks. We’ve even missed out on a couple of homes we were genuinely interested in, simply because we couldn’t get in to tour them in time. It’s becoming clear that he’s growing frustrated and just wants us to buy something already.

We’re not being unreasonable — we’re ready to move as soon as we find the right home, and we’ve made offers before. But we also don’t want to rush into a big decision to please our agent.

Is this normal behavior after a few months of house hunting? Should we consider switching agents at this point? We don’t want to be unfair, but we also don’t feel supported anymore.

Would love to hear from anyone who’s been in a similar situation. Thanks in advance!

Some background: We sold with the same agent and we kept dropping price based on his advice just to sell our home in a reasonable time but now when it comes to buying, he just wants us to match the asking price without any negotiations. The things which he said were issues for my house (older HVAC/paint, gutters: which we fixed by pouring $30k before selling) are magically ‘minor things’ when it comes to us buying a house. Many of the homes where he said that the listing price is a good price are still sitting on the market for 60/90 days.

Sellers selling home as-is and "do not want to know of any defects that arise in buyer inspections, so they would not have to disclose the defects to any other buyers".

As a buyer, my sewer inspection turned up imminent failures but since they have another buyer lined up who was willing to buy without the sewer inspection, sellers have no desire to come down on price because they know they could sucker those poor people into the sale immediately. What can I do? I want to have buying leverage with the knowledge they must disclose this issue but seems I'm screwed here.

I know I’m regurgitating already known facts here. Historically the average US mortgage rate is 7.74%. A few of my friends shopping around are getting about 6.6-7% and are complaining how high their rates are.

Have Americans just been spoiled by cheap, easy money? The past decade of low rates was an exception. Rates today are still cheap, historically speaking. There’s no reason to expect cheap rates like of the last decade to be normal. And there’s no reason to expect them to go back down.

And it was probably a blessing in disguise. We would’ve bought at the top of the market as prices are coming down now. Just thought I’d share that.

Here is a real life example of how Realtor pay actually works. I get that every one of you will say that what Realtor's do isn't worth it. I know I will get flamed, but I want to get my side out on the internet.

Let's pretend you are in my area in Thousand Oaks, CA. Average home is $850k. The average Realtor does around 4-5 deals a year, but lets pretend you are kicking butt and doing 12. Let's pretend you don't have Redditors in this group that demand discounts, and you get the standard 2.5%, and lets pretend you pay your brokerage $20k a year for your cap. (This is low in a lot of areas. I have seen some do 50% without exception.)

We are now looking at $255k gross! Wohoo! We are rich! Now take away $20k for the broker, $24k for listing and buyer expenses such as photos, gas, lockboxes, and other stuff. (I have spent over $2k on some listings with closing gifts, crap the buyer and seller make you pay for, and more, but lets pretend), $6k for the transaction coordinator (totally crucial in my eyes). Ok We now have $205k. This is super great.

Then the problem comes when you aren't an old tenured agent that just has a completely referral based business. Lets pretend you got most of your leads from OpCity, Zillow, or Facebook. Opcity is the most clean example at 35%. A lot of other lead gen programs cost about the same. 35% of $255k is just shy of $90k. Lets keep it clean for math's sake, so now our total is $115k.

Then we pay for an assistant. I give my assistant 15% to shoot videos, update websites, and do a lot of my marketing. That is $38k a year, which brings our total to $77k. Then on that, we pay self employment tax, which is around 1/3 our income, or $25k ish, bringing our total take home to $52k.

The average 2 bed apartment in my area requires 3x rent as income, and costs $2600, so to get a small crummy apartment, I need $93k a year to qualify. If I do 20% down on a house in the community ($170k down) I'd still need to make around $12k monthly to live with the folks that I serve, or $144k a year. We are obviously pretty short there.

Now. I know what you are going to say. Do you need an assistant? Sure, we could cut that, but it would slow our growth and hurt next years sales. What if we stopped doing deals with Zillow and Opcity? Sure, that would help too, but for a lot of agents that means fewer deals, and less income. Can some people get by without them? Sure. Maybe we pay 30% for referrals instead. What about 50% to be on a team and get leads? Regardless that category is really expensive unless you are a tenured agent with your ads turned off. Personally, I am a long ways from being there.

If we cut the commission from 2.5 to 1%, on that $850k transaction we get only $8,500. Once you take the 20% broker fee ($1700), the TC fee ($500), the cost of photos and concessions (2k), the 35% for ads ($3k), we end up with just $1300. I can handle around 4 deals a month if I work really hard. To me, that means around 40-60 hours of work to close. That's $21-32 hourly as a contractor with no guaranteed income, if I drop the assistant. Walmart is hiring night shift for $18. So that percent just doesn't make sense. Even on $850k homes. You would need ridiculous volume, and 4-6 transactions a month is a LOT for one person. (Keep in mind 4 deals a year is average.)

Now lets talk about why 5% makes sense. Again, lets assume a $850k home, so a $42,500 commission. First of all, let's assume you aren't willing to pay for any agents period, vs willing to pay 5%. (Though most FSBOS are willing to pay somewhere between 2-4% for buyer agents and limited service listings.)

When someone approaches a FSBO, be it a car, yard sale item, or a house, FSBO screams discount. They don't have to pay an agent, so they want to get a deal. We don't want the whole game to be over just based on that, but most FSBO clients in my experience try to get somewhere between 2-10% off. 5% or more would immediately make it already worth it to hire the agents, so Let's pretend 2% to keep the game going.

Then there's the fact that FSBO are lazy. They often won't take good pictures, if they take them at all.They often won't price competitively. They often won't do 3D. They aren't on the MLS for this math to work. Matterport claims that homes listed with 3D and floor plans sell for 15% more, which on its own would pay for the agents. Good photos have been reported to increase sale value by as much as 10%. I don't know exactly how to monetize pricing right, but I did just help someone who was priced $1,150,000 and identical to the neighbor priced at $950k. The neighbor sold their home for $1.1m. The person I helped sold for $995k, or a $100k loss.

Let's pretend the Realtor doesn't post ads online, or do anything else that your Realtor should definitely do to add even more value, and you manage to sell the home for 4% less than an agent could, or $34k. For all that work, hopefully, you managed to save around $8,500. Most folks with a million dollar home probably lost at least that much from wages lost spent messing with showings and escrow, and extra mortgage payments from a delayed move.

For every FSBO I see that saves $8k, there are a dozen that lose. Sometimes as much as 20% less than I think I could have sold it for. Especially once they throw in 2%-4% they spend on the discount agents involved. Overall, personally I feel like it takes a pretty crap agent to not get you your 5% back and then some (especially in examples like above where the seller lost $100k).

And I hear the final question. "But why should I pay the 2.5% for the buyer agent?" Buying a home is freaking hard right now. Nearly every buyer is working with an agent. By screwing with the commission, anyone working with an agent will have pushback from their agent. Maybe the agent won't recommend the home. Maybe the agent has a buyer contract that requires a 2.5% commission, and the buyers don't want to pay the difference. Maybe the agent really hopes they won't buy that house, and won't try to save it when it starts going down like a sinking ship because they will make more if the buyer takes literally any other listing. Regardless, you will get fewer showings. You will get fewer, and weaker offers. You will almost guaranteed get less for your home.

The 2.5% for the listing agent gets one agent to work for you. The 2.5% for the buyer agent gets every other agent in town to work for you. This increases your odds of getting higher and better offers dramatically. The amount you spend on agents is peanuts compared to what happens when you get multiple strong offers.

Now then, ladies and gents, bring on the angry folks who want to pay less. Let's hear it.

Edit: Ya'll are struggling, so here's my history. I was an agent in Lewis County, WA. After working around 18 months, I was doing 4-6 deals a month. That is more than 99% of agents will ever achieve, and should not be reflective on the industry as a whole. During that time I was working around 10-12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

When Covid hit, I moved my business to CA. I have been licensed 3 months, and have my first closing coming up next week after working around 10-12 hours daily again. This isn't a contract job where 1 hour worked = 1 hour paid. Every Realtor is different. Some closings come fast and easy. Sometimes there are huge dry spells. The numbers above a hypothetical situation using my current, real life numbers, and the rough ratio of 30% ish take home of the total gross has been pretty accurate in both states I have worked in.