by DanRingwald 
After a $1.8 billion verdict, the clock is ticking on the 6% real estate commission
As mentioned in one of my Blog’s a year ago The Future of Buyer’s Agents it looks like it is finally happening. The NAR, National Association of Realtors, is finally crumbling under the weight of technology and better ways of doing things, that also saves us a lot of money! This is a great article to read and this appears to be the time the general public is getting the global education it needs to see how the rest of the world handles real estate transactions. It has always amazed me to see how, especially in a high priced market like Santa Barbara, where you have such a high level of wealth and education, you have the highest level of fear when it comes to selling your home. You would think people would find other ways to sell their homes instead of paying a 6% commission on a $2m home, giving away $120,000 in commissions to a realtor for that service. A standard Realtor C.A.R. form is 10 to 20 pages and is designed to protect the realtor mostly not the seller. A typical title company like First American Title can do the same thing with 1 page, which includes their attorney’s approval, and title insurance, in case anything is missed. It is in everyone’s best interest to close with a title company to make sure all is legal and everyone feels safe and protected. Excellent Realtors and Brokers provide excellent services. Anyone that provides a poor service in any business is just poor service. It will be interesting to see what changes are made over time, large or small.
Here is one change I would like to see happen and it will be a great surprise to me if it ever happens. Let all real estate commissions be completely negotiable from zero to whatever and sellers pay listing agents and buyers pay buyers agents. A federal mandate gives sellers one year to sell their property with Realtors. Every time they jump from one realtor to the next Realtor, which is usually because it’s way overpriced, the commissions needs to be split between all succeeding realtors during that one year period. The result would be extremely small commissions as there would be way too many splits to pay out so no Realtor would list their property. It would not be worth a reators time to list it. The sellers would have to get a lot more serious about selling as they would end up having to sell it themselves. Statically sellers that sell their homes themselves always end up with a lower sales price, which would be better for buyers. Sellers jumping from realtor to realtor is one reason why 70% of all agents do it part time, as they cannot generate enough income when sellers play musical chairs with realtors, wasting everyone’s time. Obviously something in this game isn’t working so let’s shake it up, find some better solutions and keep changing it over time so it works better for each new generation. How can we say Capitalism is the best thing on the planet when we are not making it better for our children and each following generation, to buy and own their own home? That goes for our health as well. Is money worth more than our health? A lot of people outside the United States will say “Not in our Country”.
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