March 21, 2008

Update on the ramen-eater who won't cut her commission, regardless of what the market will pay


I wish more realtor sites would allow comments from consumers instead of just other realtors. They'd be SO much more entertaining.

Active Rain, god bless 'em, allowed HP'ers and others to comment on the post where the realtor stomped her feet and said no way Jose was she cutting her rate - because she had all these other crooks taking her money (waaaaa!!).

$20 an hour I say. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Take it or leave it.

Here's some of the best comments. Feel free to keep adding, but keep it clean OK...

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Dear Kim,

You provide no value whatsoever. Is there a "vehicletor" when I want to sell my car? No. Sorry cutie, find a new job.

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HAHAHA!, pathetic. Thanks for helping to destroy the economy realtor lady.
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Realtor is the new used car salesman
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Will you be selling houses.....No!
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One word for you.

Redfin

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Realtors are scum. What service do you provide? Your days are numbered.
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you will be getting a lesson in economics, as the free market will be cutting your commission for you, regardless of what you think. have fun revisiting this post and these thoughts in a year!
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You need not cut your commission.

It will be cut for you, by the market, or you will simply become part of the tsunamai of out-of-work used house salespeople.
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I cannot understand why Realtors charge 6% in the US.

I lived in the UK and I sold my house and the Realtors charged 1%

They also prepared beautiful marketing materials - full color brochures - not like the garbage here.

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30 comments:

Anonymous said...

Demolition contractors are likely to become the Next Hot Thing. Efficiency and the ability to clear large areas will be valued. After that, ex-realtors can be employed for a honest minimum wage in a government-funded conservation project - planting trees where the "investment-grade" real estate formerly stood.

Anonymous said...

that profession is the most inefficient in the country

imagine you could only buy a vacuum cleaner from a door to door salesmen - they would cost $3000 each since you would have to support 500,000 vacuum cleaner salesmen in CA alone each with his own 'farm' (territory).

we need walmart, bank of america, waMu etc to be able to sell real estate - but the crooked politicians keep taking the bribes.

were a banana republic thats for sure. wife of the ex president runs for president?! and its considered normal?(yeah in United States Of Bananas)

Anonymous said...

Keith,

I enjoy reading your blog regularly but on this one you are a total loser.

Anonymous said...

hey, it was good to see an evildoc comment there. Tsunamai indeed :)

Anonymous said...

There is a reason you need a license to sell real estate, but unfortunately the requirements are still too low for realtors. If it were a more regulated profession, it might have more to offer. Mortgage brokers should also be licensed, so you won't get 20-year old kids putting people into Option ARM's.

Appraiser qualifications went up in California this year and you actually need some college. At least they are heading in the right direction.

Anonymous said...

Not everybody knows how, or wants to learn how to sell a house.

And not everybody wants to house hunt without someone holding their hand throughout the process.

Some people don't want to change their own oil.

Get it?

Realtors are going to keep on keeping on if they adjust to the times and the market.

The people that want to continue like it's 2000-2006 business as usual won't survive.

It's unlikely the realtor profession will ever become extinct...although I'll never use one.

Anonymous said...

"And not everybody wants to house hunt without someone holding their hand throughout the process.

Some people don't want to change their own oil.

Get it?"

As a potential buyer/seller, I would prefer to have somebody to hold my hand through the process too, but for (say) 6%x$400k=$24k??

24 f!cking k! What normal person wouldn't go through some amount of work and discomfort to save that much money?

Yeah the oil change, you can save $20 for 0.5 hours of work, but here we have $24k for 20-40h of work. It doesn't merit a second of consideration.

Anonymous said...

I work in the REIC.
Sure there are the indepenendt Do-It-Your-Selfers who can sell a house themselves and negotiate and buy them selves. But trust me, 95% of all the sheeple out there want someone to hold their hand through the entire process:
They want someone to tell them what their house is worth so they don't have to do the homework.
They don't want to have to talk to the buyers and talk about "price". It's too intimidating for them. Too emotional too. That's the biggest thing-- Realtors take the emotion out of dealing with buyers.
Buyers want someone to hold their hand through the whole process.
Until Americans become self sufficent again and willing to do-for-themselves, Realtors will not only continue to be around---- they will be in demand.

Anonymous said...

One more thing about the Realty business---
It's the biggest Multi-Level marketing setup around.
In fact, the owner of one of the largest Realty companies in Ohio once boastingly described himself as "The Highest Paid Pimp" in the city.

Anonymous said...

Hard rain sure is making the rounds -- check out the realtor shred in the blog comments on Too much sunshine?.

Realtor says market is great 'cause he closed $19 million in '07.

Hard rain points out the guy's website says $10 mil -- which is it?

Realtor admits he "forgot" about the missing $9 mil that didn't close.

There's a lot more -- you can't make this sh*t up.

Anonymous said...

Keith - What fun it is to piss her and her realor buddies off!

Anonymous said...

Realtors are as relevant to homes as a sun dial is to telling time. I'm all for the services like Redfin, that were blocked in my state by the realtor lobby.

There's some great comments on the blog by they way. I'm sure she's eating a box of Bon Bon's and saying to herself "Please don't tell me this many people think I should cut my commission, boo hoo".

Anonymous said...

It is UNAMERICAN to eff with a PROFESSIONAL realtor's 6% take.

WTF! You friggin TERRORISTS are tryin to take the profit outta EVERYTHING!

Anonymous said...

her position makes sense, I mean why in the world should she be immune to simple econ 101. I like a woman that stands up for what she believes and demands respect!!
I hope she takes these traits with her to the next gig dancing on a pole and demanding $5's and $10's instead of $1's.

I wonder if she already knows about all of the fees that "adult entertainers" have to pay. I would love to see that breakdown. LOL

Anonymous said...

I came up with the 'Will you be selling houses...no!' comment. YES!!!!

Anonymous said...

When I was growing up, realtors took 6% on urban/suburban real estate and 10% on rural properties. I don't think 6% of the first $100,000 is actually unreasonable, but the percentage should drop as the price goes up. If the realtor and client want to have an agreement on some sort of bonus scheme if the realtor sells the house within a certain time period, or for very close to full price, then that is fine also. And for 6%, the realtor should be giving competent advice on EXACTLY what the client needs to do to get top dollar (remove some of the furniture, re-paint the living room, etc.)

What is amazing to me is what a CRUMMY job most realtors do. A few of them specialize in a certain neighborhood and really know their stuff, but most of them don't know anything more about the neighborhood than the average couple they are dragging around on house visits.

Go to realtor.com and look at the listings -- even in these very tough times, the realtors listing the properties have put the bare amount of information and ONE photo of each property listed. There are typically no interior photos, and no info on the neighborhood, the schools, the special features of the particular house. In a surprising number of cases, they don't even manage to put in the square footage, the name of the local elementary school, whether there is a bathroom on first floor, etc.

In cases where a condo is listed, and has the same floor plan as several other condos listed in the same development, there will generally be no information to entice somebody to buy the unit listed with them, rather than one of the units listed with a competitor. With service this bad, the owner of the unit would be better off to subtract 6% off his price and go with Craigslist.

Anonymous said...

Keith,

I agree to a certain point. But you assume everyone out there is like you. Fact is most people don't have a freaking clue about anything. They wouldn't know what to do when buying or selling a house. Remember, most Americans are idiots.

Yea it's not hard to buy or sell a house yourself. But neither is doing your taxes and people spend billions of dollars a year for someone else to do their taxes for them.

Anonymous said...

The comments on that thread are getting funny as anything. Send over Andrew Hac to the website talking about green bamboo and roasted armadillo, etc.

Basically you have a few realtors jumping in talking about how they never lower their price followed by a bunch of savvy HP'ers and general public slamming them up with every logical argument. I expect Kim to delete any comment that is not a cheerleading comment, a la Casey Serin.

-BC

Anonymous said...

I did buy and sell my house with a realtor but once I saw what was involved and in going to open houses for sale by owner I realized it's just not that hard and I sold my sister's coop for her after a realtor failed to sell it in the 6 months he had the listing. But I think because there is so much emotion - it's a huge investment - that realtors are far more likely to push someone into something that's not good for them than to help them make a good decision. So I say no to 6% - I might pay someone a flat fee to do an analysis or a flat fee to get on the MLS but I would definitely do it myself next time.

Anonymous said...

You aren't pissing me off, thats the funny part! I eat this up! -Kim Carpenter (Im not taking time to sign in here)But see how I use my REAL name - you should try it!

Anonymous said...

>>>>Realtors take the emotion out of dealing with buyers.<<<<

Bullshit. Realtors play up emotion every chance they get.

Frank R said...

"As a potential buyer/seller, I would prefer to have somebody to hold my hand through the process too, but for (say) 6%x$400k=$24k??

24 f!cking k! What normal person wouldn't go through some amount of work and discomfort to save that much money? "


Exactly. It's true you can't do it 100% alone, but this is a very valid point - 6% is WAY too excessive. Just look at the comment from the British gentleman explaining that commissions are only 1% in the UK.

Commissions should be 1% in the US here.

Look, all you have to do is join PrePaid Legal for $25/month and they'll provide a qualified attorney to handle the transaction for you. $25 is a much better deal than $24k, and the lawyer will be far more competent than a bimbo realtwhore.

Some states such as NY require you to hire an attorney anyway, ON TOP of the realtor commissions, meaning the commission was a total waste!!

Anonymous said...

They simply do not provide the value that 6% pays, particularly when you look at the average price of home in expensive markets.

They do the same thing by way of posting signs, craigslist ads and other zero cost methods, whether the property is a $200k condo or $900k single family home. Why does that justify a larger premium on the $900k property? It doesn't. The only other out-of-pocket costs they incur are possible ads through the paper or the local edition of Homes and Land. Maybe some color fliers. Big deal. A couple of hundred dollars at best.

Also, they know NOTHING of contracts. As noted above 80% don't even have college degrees. Do you want that advice on contract terms for your largest leveraged purchase? Hell, it's better to pay a lawyer for an hour's worth of his time for the contract terms. Cheaper, too, when you factor in the 6% commission.

I think you will see a huge change in the real estate business, wherein realtors will actually be treated more like organ-grinding chimps, and paid accordingly. You are already seeing such changes through Homesmart, etc.

And I agree that most realtors are these aging, bored women who think they can bat their eyes and chat away like they were 25 and this creates successful 'marketing.' So funny.

Anonymous said...

Keep tossing those bombs, turdburglars! Whack away at the morons on activerain. Yep, you guys are taking down the RE business...with only bad writing and a two-bit blog as your weapons.

Thanks also for helping thin the herd that is my competition. This is great; you do the work, and I don't have to spend a penny or lift a finger.

You asshats are truly amusing. Experts on everything. Yeah, right. You all sound like a bunch of low-level IT grunts, wondering where the hell your promising lives went so terribly awry...and why everybody you work for doesn't see your brilliance. I just wonder which of you will snap first and go all jabberwocky in your workplace.

I wish I could post here more often, but I'm too damn busy churning through short sales...that I charge 8-10% commish to do. The banks whine and cry and try to wheedle me down on every single one of them; if the homeowners are good folks, I relent; if the homeowners are jerks (or have disappeared), I tell the banks to go ahead and foreclose if they don't feel like paying me. F- 'em.

1% commish in England? Good for them. Maybe I can charge 1% someday...when the gubmint takes care of me and mine, cradle to grave, on the public dime. Until then, my crappy insurance runs about 12K a year. Oh...and my retirement won't be on the public dole, either. Guess I gotta save for that, since by the time I feel like slowing down, Social Insecurity will be tapped out.

You people talk about how smart you are. I haven't seen one shred of evidence that any of you could handle being self-employed- or run your own business- for more than 12 hours without running it straight into the ground.

You probably think the commission check that leaves a closing all goes into a RE agent's pocket as pure profit, too.

Anonymous said...

In my country, the tax authorities take 6% as transfer tax. The realtor can take 1% or the highway.

Arrogance of a 6% US realtor in this market will be met with empty hands and hungry kids at home.

Tyro said...

You people talk about how smart you are. I haven't seen one shred of evidence that any of you could handle being self-employed- or run your own business- for more than 12 hours without running it straight into the ground.

You see, this is part of the realtors' sense of entitlement-- because you run your own business/are self employed, you feel entitled to a 6% commission! No one cares. People who work for a living sell their own cars, do their own repairs, and, yes, sell their own house. Just because someone might be "self employed" and charging people to do those things doesn't mean that someone can't do it himself or can't pay someone on a normal fee-for-service basis.

Anonymous said...

clotpoll has it right about the low level IT grunts. This blog might as well be renamed Renting Geeks. Think of your company's nerd farm and this is who posts here.

Now I await for the replies about how critical you nerds are to corporate America, blah blah. Save it nerdlings.

Devestment said...

While in San Francisco buying distressed assets the other day I noticed a business called "Ramen Club" I did not have a camera or I would have taken a shot of it for you.;)

Anonymous said...

Keith,

If you really want to make little Kim stick her lower lip out...then take down this thread. SHE IS ABSOLUTELY LOVING THIS ATTENTION.

Anonymous said...

One of the most fun Activerain blog threads I have seen. As a REALTOR whose company policy is 7% (in a 6 and 5% market), I am looking for an alternative. The consumer is just not that stupid anymore.