A federal jury ruled on Tuesday that the powerful National Association of Realtors and several large brokerages had conspired to artificially inflate the commissions paid to real estate agents, a decision that could radically alter the home-buying process in the United States.
The realtors’ group and brokerages were ordered to pay damages of nearly $1.8 billion. The verdict allows the court to issue treble damages, which means they could swell to more than $5 billion.
Will update with non-paywalled link when one becomes available.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that is not the norm.
For every sale they make, there are countless others they don’t. And they still have to put in the time.
I’ve gone through many realtors looking for a house, all of them gave me hours of their time and didn’t see a penny in return.
That said, I don’t think realtors are necessary and we should push the idea that people shouldn’t use them unless they think they need to.
Sure, that’s still 50k for a single sale, sell two like that a year and you don’t need to work the rest of the year.
She did a great job and recommend her to all my friends, but the amount of hours she put in wasn’t that high for her return. I know I’m paying for knowledge, not hours but it still doesn’t feel right.
Our budget really limited what we could buy. So much of it felt unnecessary, like every house has disclosures but you can’t view them without emailing my realtor. Every offer is the same, waive all contingencies and bid what you think not what it’s listed at. I think realtors are needed in the transaction but the pay isn’t correct.
The other realtors are the ones making it this difficult so that you need realtors though lol.
The house we bought and one one we sold, we had an absolutely fantastic realtor but he also lowered his commission on the sale so that we could still make the numbers we needed to afford everything. He was a great one.
It would be nice if we weren’t literally forced into that though. We wanted to look at a house on Zelle and they assigned this person to us. Like we literally couldn’t look at a house without one. That’s ridiculous. I’m happy with the person we got and he absolutely worked his ass off for what he got but the fact you’re forced into it basically doesn’t sit well with me.
Our realtor was like our best friend for a month while we were looking for houses (not in a creepy way, in a helpful way) and gave us a big wreath when we bought our house. He definitely put the time in.