The 6 Percent Solution - Skip the Real Estate Agent

Another article in the New York Times on keeping the money that a realtor would receive. Also, this article re-iterates Steven Levitt's point about realtors having an incentive to lower the price for your house to get the transaction turn-around time increased.

Move.com vs. Redfin.com debate

Watch this if you would like to see an interesting debate about the direction of commission vs. service based real estate and some insight into how the real estate market is going to be shifting over the next couple of years.

Buying without a realtor and getting money back

For those who are currently shopping for a home, consider this alternative to the traditional approach. Use existing online real estate services and attend open houses to find a home that you feel confident meets your needs. Do your own title search, appraisal by looking at comps and have an inspection performed. Determine the minimum and maximum that you are willing to pay for the house. After these steps if you feel confident about buying the house approach the sellers realtor and tell them that you would like to use their services to buy the house, but you want a 2% commission deducted from your offer. The agent should then recognize that s/he will get a 4% total commission and that it's advantageous. At this point you need to stick to your guns and be happy to walk away if the agent begins to get squirrelly. If you can do this successfully you will be looking at $8000 saved on a $400k home, which is enough to do some significant improvements. It will require that you be pro-active and willing to question "convention".

Redfin - A Vulcan Venture

It appears that Redfin.com is offering a very similar offering to the feesible development I've undertaken in the past year. Providing consumers with an alternative to traditional realtors and real-estate. By providing an online set of services which cover most of what traditional realtors provide, the 6% that a seller spends on selling their home with a realtor is eliminated. Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures is funding this Seattle based startup, which will be interesting to track through 07'.