Do I need a real estate agent?

[04SE]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
A typical contract is six months; if it's on your street and you see a sign go up, wait the six months (if you're bored!) then make contact after.


Just an FYI, we work with ReMax frequently and while their contracts are (generally) 6 months they have clauses about selling it after the 6 months where they can still get their fee.

 

[CT8]

If the buyer and seller are good to go the Title company will make it work . If the buyer or seller are Iffy an agent will usually be the one sued and have insurance. I have bought and sold houses myself and have had agents do the work. Satisfied both ways.Sometimes a great agent is worth the $$$

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: SVTCobra
Thanks for all the replies. I already bought a house in the past without a realtor representing either party and was a smooth transaction. Sounds like unless the seller and their agent redo their contract then I can't get anywhere.

The reason why I asked is there are some significant savings to be had and since I research these properties myself and don't need any hand holding along the way I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. For those that think I'm being cheap I am to some extent but why pay a realtor a significant chunk of money for something I can do myself far cheaper and have researched and already did something similar in the past? To me it's like working on your car if you know how, to save money and learn something new.


That's where you missed the key part, the contract is between the seller and the broker. It has nothing to do with you. If the broker finds a buyer directly, they keep the whole commission, that's their incentive to find a direct buyer. Their job is to find a buyer and have the sale close. Your research has nothing to do with the commission. The hand holding is only if you need it to get to closing. They just get paid if it closes. You are not paying the realtor anything, the seller is paying it out of their proceeds. The commissions that the realtor gets lets them pay for their MLS and advertise the property. It's a chicken/egg problem. You're not saving any money working on your car if the manufacturer throws in a free maintenance package and it's impossible to negotiate that out of the price. Your other issue is that if you don't have a broker, to the listing agent, it's twice the work. If you do twice the work, wouldn't you expect twice the pay? I've been in those situations, it really is twice the work because now neither party really trusts the agent so you've got to walk a tight line. It's much harder to keep the deal together and I've had more blow up than go through, sometimes a co-broke is just easier because each agent just has to control his buyer/seller and neither party is being too cheap so they don't end up blowing up the deal.

 

[PandaBear]

Supposedly, a seller agent either gets a bad reputation by also being the buyer agent (conflict of interest), or will refuse to work with a buyer without an agent.

I recently bought a condo with a buyer agent that specialize in doing nothing (no showing the house, not helping you find a house), but instead only help you write offers and communicate between you and the seller agent (i.e. that bid will likely be too low, or the seller hint that they expect to sell for X amount of dollar).

He charged either a fixed $8k fee or 35% of his commission, whichever is lower, and refund the rest of his commission to the buyer either in an escrow or as a 1099. I think he was making way more not showing houses and only writing offers.