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Originally Posted by somdrenter  You describe perfectly the benefits of a sellers agent. And I think your commission is commensurate with the sellers desires. However, given the proliferation of online services, information, and advertising, I could see the realtor profession going the way of the travel agent.
Quite a few of those advertising mediums are already accessible to the seller. The others could possibly be opened up by fixed prices services. |
I think we have to agree to disagree here. Yes, the commission is commensurate, and people have sold successfully without agents and even with limited service agents, and will continue to do so. Real estate is about more than just listing, it's also about people, marketing, management, and consumer protection, and it's the combination of all these things that make a realtor valuable to so many people.
As far as the mediums being accesible, some are, but not all, naturally. The problem I've seen generally with fixed price services is two-fold.
1) They do not seem to put together as effective a "plan" for marketing. "Yes, it'll be on the MLS and Realtor.com with a photo" is not a plan, IMHO. They are able to fulfill the bare minimum, but I personally do not feel that is conducive to maximizng sales potential. It's all the little things combined that make the difference, such as Virtual Tours, Good Photos, Enticing Descriptions, Distribution of Materials, Promoting Homes to Likely Buyer Demographics, and so forth. I have yet to see a flat fee (or even discount broker) MLS listing that had the exposure I provide.
Yes they may be able to add your listing to zillow, but how will it stack up to other zillow listings? Will it have multiple photos there? Will the Virtual Tour Be There? Will the description be expanded since there is more room to write promotional blurbs? I'm not saying they won't, but we all know what online attention spans are like, and that's why these types of details are important.
2) Who are these people that provide flat fee services, and what is their motivation? If you're paying $500 to put the home on the MLS, what is their motivation to get the home sold? If it doesn't sell you're out the money regardless. The problem is that any listing is going to run me a couple grand in marketing costs, not to mention time spent working on it, and if it fails to sell, I'm out of luck. Not every agent spends that kind of money, but I notice higher volume agents do, and it's because they are confident of their ability to get the home sold. If they couldn't sell homes, they'd be out of business, right? The problem is that it can be hard to understand what you are getting from an individual agent, because it's an agent's job to say "Pick Me, I'm Great At Selling Homes!", and not all Realtors are cut from the same cloth.