If you’ve never bought a home in the United States you may be unfamiliar with one of the long-standing peculiarities of our system, which is that the seller of the home is required to pay a 6% commission on the sale, which gets split between both their own real estate agent and the buyer’s agent. This is a much higher commission than agents in other countries typically charge.
Theoretically you can negotiate that fee down, but in practice real estate agents are a sufficiently organized interest group to make that impractical. No agent will compete with another to win your business by accepting a lower commission. They all recognize they have a shared interest in keeping that figure high. This drives up the price of housing substantially.
Which is why it’s kind of a Big Deal that, after losing a landmark antitrust case last year, America’s real estate agents have agreed to drop the uniform 6% commission.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/15/economy/nar-realtor-commissions-settlement/index.html
Jason Lefkowitz /
npub1na…ar3s2
2024-03-16 17:07:37
Author Public Key
npub1na4ep09zgyk2dglssm565fqvky2r7r8mq4vxppyjmm63aeqsth2quar3s2Published at
2024-03-16 17:07:37Event JSON
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"content": "If you’ve never bought a home in the United States you may be unfamiliar with one of the long-standing peculiarities of our system, which is that the seller of the home is required to pay a 6% commission on the sale, which gets split between both their own real estate agent and the buyer’s agent. This is a much higher commission than agents in other countries typically charge.\n\nTheoretically you can negotiate that fee down, but in practice real estate agents are a sufficiently organized interest group to make that impractical. No agent will compete with another to win your business by accepting a lower commission. They all recognize they have a shared interest in keeping that figure high. This drives up the price of housing substantially.\n\nWhich is why it’s kind of a Big Deal that, after losing a landmark antitrust case last year, America’s real estate agents have agreed to drop the uniform 6% commission.\n\nhttps://www.cnn.com/2024/03/15/economy/nar-realtor-commissions-settlement/index.html",
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