I've only bought 1 house in 2002. Back then, boy did I have a lot to learn. I called the realtor on the sign and said I was interested--you should have seen how eager he was to close the sale. Dual agent city.
Then my buddy said you don't do that, you get your own buyer's agent, who deals with the seller's agent. They each get 3%.
Anyway, at the time, my realtor was my buddy's dad's friend. He was a SVP at a regional bank. I asked him, why are you doing real estate, you're an SVP at a bank? He said because I'm getting old, and I find that at my age (57), the more I ask my reports to do something, the more they push back. I'd rather spend my time doing something I want to do.
Now in retrospect, 57 was old to me back then, so I couldn't relate to doing something part time on the side, that someone was new to. He was from Bucks Co. PA, and he'd drive all the way down here to show me 1-3 houses, 2X per week? That's gotta be 1+ hours each way battling I-95 traffic.
The one concept he could not drive home to me...I said how come assessments are so low relative to the asking prices? He tried to say they only have bearing relative to one another, not to the selling price. As a matter of fact, it was like 2021 where our assessments nearly doubled. Taxes stayed exactly the same as mill rate went down. Assessments are supposed to be revenue blind. For the king to know what's in the kingdom, and to nail people who made improvements without permits.
The funniest is when we finally made the purchase maybe 4 mos. later. I said, "So you get 3%, huh?"
He laughed out loud. He said hardly, I'm not even a broker, I'm an agent. The managing broker gets a cut, the house gets a cut, and I get well, a small piece. But looking back, he liked showing houses and looking at them with me. I believe him to this day when he said he gets gratification out of seeing a first time home buyer find something they wanted. Maybe these guys exist in FL, maybe not
