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That guy seems awesome. I don't understand why people will happily, HAPPILY pay a Realtor(TM) a 4% commission (for doing practically nothing) on the purchase of a half million dollar house but balk at the idea of paying someone $1500 to crawl over every square inch of their purchase and make sure there's not raccoons in the attic, frayed electrical wires, and flooded basement levels of fuckery going on.
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Mar 10, 2015 13:42
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30 Goddamned Dicks posted:That guy seems awesome. I don't understand why people will happily, HAPPILY pay a Realtor(TM) a 4% commission (for doing practically nothing) on the purchase of a half million dollar house but balk at the idea of paying someone $1500 to crawl over every square inch of their purchase and make sure there's not raccoons in the attic, frayed electrical wires, and flooded basement levels of fuckery going on. Because it's not 4% of every house you look at, really.
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Mar 10, 2015 13:50
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insta posted:Because it's not 4% of every house you look at, really. You don't get every house you look at inspected, either. You pick a house, tell the sellers "I want your house," put down ten grand or whatever as good faith, and THEN the inspector comes in and crawls around the house.
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Mar 10, 2015 14:03
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Also Realtors charge 6-7% usually.
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Mar 10, 2015 14:14
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I think some of it is perception. The realtor is the guy trying to make your dreams come true - he's the one showing you all these great houses and trying to get you in them, and even if you know he's only sort of on your side, he probably has as much enthusiasm for the process as you can muster. Then you find a place and it's close to your dream and you put in an offer and you are so close you can taste it... and along comes this inspector guy with a frown and a clipboard and he starts poking holes in your dream with talk about dangerous wiring and collapsing foundations and firecodes and your house-buying dream goes down like the house on a sinkhole you were planning to buy. It's not like he made those problems, but it's hard not to resent the messenger.
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Mar 10, 2015 14:15
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Ashcans posted:I think some of it is perception. The realtor is the guy trying to make your dreams come true - he's the one showing you all these great houses and trying to get you in them, and even if you know he's only sort of on your side, he probably has as much enthusiasm for the process as you can muster. If an inspector finds deal-breaker problems, I don't resent him, I buy him a bottle of scotch that's old enough to vote. Conversely, if I buy something with major issues that the inspector didn't find, his name goes on The List.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:41
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DNova posted:Also Realtors charge 6-7% usually. Sure, but Isn't that split buyer/seller realtor? Wanna have fun? Get multiple realtors in a room and ask them what they charge. The ones I've see are so bat-poo poo scared of the government declaring them a cartel and price-fixing, they won't even say it if another can hear.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:57
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Realtors are almost universally scum, a few tiers below used car salesmen. If you ever had a "good realtor" he was just a good actor.
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Mar 10, 2015 16:59
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As a buyer, I didn't pay the Realtor a time. Since it was a registered dude and we went through the MLS system, the seller agrees to pay X% to get in the database, and if the buyer doesn't have an agent, the seller's agent gets all of the fee. Since I had a registered agent, he and the seller's agent split the fee. It is a good setup for me anyways since I wouldn't have been able to afford a buyer's agent.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:02
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Boogalo posted:As a buyer, I didn't pay the Realtor a time. Since it was a registered dude and we went through the MLS system, the seller agrees to pay X% to get in the database, and if the buyer doesn't have an agent, the seller's agent gets all of the fee. Since I had a registered agent, he and the seller's agent split the fee. It is a good setup for me anyways since I wouldn't have been able to afford a buyer's agent. I thought (and my experience was) that the buyer doesn't pay the buyer's agent directly, they just get their cut of the commission.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:05
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Dragyn posted:I thought (and my experience was) that the buyer doesn't pay the buyer's agent directly, they just get their cut of the commission. Right. If I had gone for something for sale by owner, and not in the grand system, I would have been on the hook for the commission.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:07
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DNova posted:Also Realtors charge 6-7% usually. Ah, must depend on the market. I did some contracting for a Realtor a few months back and I know he charged 4-5%. Even splitting that with the brokerage results in a ridiculous commission for not that much work. $25000 on a half million house (at 5%) and I think he had to split that 40/60 with the brokerage he worked for, so he would make $15,000 off of the sale, and it usually took him a month or two to sell a house. Even two open houses and some marketing mailing there's no drat way he sunk $15K worth of work into selling a house. I had a colleague of mine who become a certified Realtor (taking the classes and the test and everything) before he bought his house, because the extra time was worth it to him to not have to go through the Realtor(TM) mill. He said all kinds of doors were opened and fees were waived because he was representing himself instead of going through a middleman.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:19
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SynthOrange posted:
It looks like they did weld some small bar behind (highlighted in red) but most likely not enough to handle a decent floor loading. 
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Mar 10, 2015 17:20
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Neutrino posted:It looks like they did weld some small bar behind (highlighted in red) but most likely not enough to handle a decent floor loading. I'm pretty sure that's just what's left of the top flange, and even if they did weld it it wont do a lot without the rest of the bar.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:25
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Baronjutter posted:Realtors are almost universally scum, a few tiers below used car salesmen. If you ever had a "good realtor" he was just a good actor. This. When we sold our condo we were routinely disappointed with our realtor, to the point that we would have thrown our hands up in despair if it wasn't for our (very excellent) real estate lawyer we hired. I flat out told our realtor that they did such a poor job that if I could legally give their commission to the lawyer, I would.
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Mar 10, 2015 17:36
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Boogalo posted:As a buyer, I didn't pay the Realtor a time. Since it was a registered dude and we went through the MLS system, the seller agrees to pay X% to get in the database, and if the buyer doesn't have an agent, the seller's agent gets all of the fee. Since I had a registered agent, he and the seller's agent split the fee. It is a good setup for me anyways since I wouldn't have been able to afford a buyer's agent. This is a misconception that realtors love to perpetuate. Because of realtors, the price of your house was about 6% higher than it would have been, and yes, you paid it.
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Mar 10, 2015 18:29
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slap me silly posted:This is a misconception that realtors love to perpetuate. Because of realtors, the price of your house was about 6% higher than it would have been, and yes, you paid it. And this is a misunderstanding of macroeconomics. The price was set by supply and demand: absent realtors, the supply and demand for houses doesn't magically adjust to bring prices down by exactly 6%. It's fair to say that realtors' fees add to the transaction costs of selling a house, and that transaction costs affect sellers' ability and willingness to sell; but their ability/willingness to sell is also affected by a host of other factors, economical and personal, so it's not a direct 1:1 relationship. In the edge case, where a homeowner wants to sell but cannot, and the reason they cannot is specifically that six percent (e.g., their gross equity in the home is less than 6%), then you have one home that isn't on the market, which reduces available inventory, which pushes up demand from 1st time buyers (who are typically the majority of the market). So, in that one case, if the fees weren't there, inventory would be higher and prices would be lower. But most houses are not sold within that threshhold, and we cannot say that a home owner thinking about selling will make up their mind based on a 6% delta in what they can get for their home. Why do people sell a home? Most often it's because of life changes: moving up (or sadly down) the economic ladder, retiring, moving for work, expanding or contracting family size, and so on. Rarely is it purely a cold calculation that it's time to take profits on an asset because it has reached a specific profit threshhold, in which case that 6% would make a significant difference in decision-making. I agree that agents shouldn't be compensated based on a percentage of the sales price, and moreover I'm not sure if agents should be compensted on commission at all, but it's oversimplifying things way too much to flatly state that the commission is always directly reflected exactly in the sale price.
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Mar 10, 2015 21:40
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Leperflesh posted:And this is a misunderstanding of macroeconomics. The price was set by supply and demand: absent realtors, the supply and demand for houses doesn't magically adjust to bring prices down by exactly 6%.  "I have this house I want to sell. I'm listing it at $X, of which I get $.9X after paying transaction costs of $.02X and realtor fees of $.08X." "I'll give you $.95X for your house, with no realtor fees." "Sold!"Supply and demand has an effect on house costs, but houses aren't commodities and the initial sticker price is just a starting point for negotiation.
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Mar 10, 2015 22:00
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:
I guess I wasn't clear. In a marketplace in which all of the houses carry that transaction cost, if you can ad-hoc drop it, yes, you get to pocket the money. In comparing two otherwise-identical marketplaces, one of which carries that transaction cost and another which doesn't, we should not expect to see an exact difference between prices equal to the amount of the transaction cost, because it is not the only or even the most important factor in how the marketplace determines a price.
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Mar 10, 2015 22:25
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I liked my realtor and he did a pretty good job beating up the bank for dragging their heels on the bank-owned home I bought. I felt he earned his money. He also helped us sell our old home and even fronted us a couple grand to get some needed repairs.
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Mar 11, 2015 01:38
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Ashcans posted:I think some of it is perception. The realtor is the guy trying to make your dreams come true - he's the one showing you all these great houses and trying to get you in them, and even if you know he's only sort of on your side, he probably has as much enthusiasm for the process as you can muster. You also generally spend more time with your realtor and your brain translates that to "time on the clock." You've been driven all over town by this person for weeks or months looking at houses so of course you own them something for all that work. Then you have this other person show up and poke around your potential new house for a couple of hours and they want this big lump sum just for pointing out that there's some damage to the siding and the roof will probably need replacing in a few years? I was and am still very happy with my realtor and I recommend going through one to anyone who doesn't have the inclination to learn everything you need to know to buy/sell a property. But that doesn't mean a lot of people aren't really terrible at judging the value of time spent against the value of work done.
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Mar 11, 2015 06:57
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Baronjutter posted:Realtors are almost universally scum, a few tiers below used car salesmen. If you ever had a "good realtor" he was just a good actor. FWIW, my mother used to buy houses that needed work, we'd live in them for a couple of years while the 3 of us (mom, stepdad, myself, and contractors for anything we couldn't tackle) fixed up the house, then sell it for a decent profit. She used the same realtor for everything for over 15 years for both buying and selling, and still stays in touch with her. We moved out of that area 18 years ago, and the realtor is long retired (she's well into her 80s now, and also left the area). She may have been out of the norm, but she was always great to work with. tl;dr don't assume all realtors are scum, and if you find a good one, hang on to them as long as you live in the area.
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Mar 11, 2015 07:49
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^^^ thats because there was a working relationship the realtor knew your mom would be a repeat customer every couple of years and not a one off thus it makes sense not to burn her
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Mar 11, 2015 09:37
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max4me posted:^^^ Yes, it's just literally impossible that a realtor could ever be a decent human being who cares about her customers. If you become a realtor you lose your soul: all realtors are scum, always. Seriously the hyperbole about realtors is getting tiresome. Shoud people be suspicious of expensive middlemen who often do not justify their cost with equivalent value in services? Absolutely. But just because some goons have had bad experiences does not mean good or worthwhile realtors literally do not exist. Insisting on this point is not useful or helpful in any way and is only making those of you doing it sound like you're just bitter about your individual experience to the point of being completely uselessly biased.
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Mar 11, 2015 17:57
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The home inspection guy is way way on the side of "every realtor is out to get you", but that's not something I necessarily believe. But I do think you should step back and think about things if your realtor ever tries to recommend their own home inspector. That's a big red flag for me.
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Mar 11, 2015 18:05
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Leperflesh posted:Yes, it's just literally impossible that a realtor could ever be a decent human being who cares about her customers. If you become a realtor you lose your soul: all realtors are scum, always. Die realtor scum.
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Mar 12, 2015 00:17
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30 Goddamned Dicks posted:That guy seems awesome. I don't understand why people will happily, HAPPILY pay a Realtor(TM) a 4% commission (for doing practically nothing) on the purchase of a half million dollar house but balk at the idea of paying someone $1500 to crawl over every square inch of their purchase and make sure there's not raccoons in the attic, frayed electrical wires, and flooded basement levels of fuckery going on. Because the buyer does not pay the realtor the seller does.
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Mar 12, 2015 01:07
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ColHannibal posted:Because the buyer does not pay the realtor the seller does. And the price the seller charges incorporates the costs of doing business, including the realtor's fee.
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Mar 12, 2015 01:10
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:And the price the seller charges incorporates the costs of doing business, including the realtor's fee. One could argue that but price/sq foot is a pretty heavy equalizer that stops the seller from passing the cost of incidentals onto the buyer. But even if you say it's baked in, the fact you don't write a check yourself or even see it as a line item in closing makes people unaware of it.
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Mar 12, 2015 01:15
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ColHannibal posted:One could argue that but price/sq foot is a pretty heavy equalizer that stops the seller from passing the cost of incidentals onto the buyer. But even if you say it's baked in, the fact you don't write a check yourself or even see it as a line item in closing makes people unaware of it. Everyone pays the realtor. Everyone's price per sq. ft. has the realtor cost baked in. It's not free money.
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Mar 12, 2015 03:30
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While we're making GBS threads all over realtors, why don't we talk poo poo about mortgage brokers, title companies, and notarys? They all seem pretty upset that you are wasting their time when you want spend more than 20 minutes going over and signing a 40 page contract. Oh, If you have an impound account wrapped in with your mortgage, make sure they are actually paying your insurance and property tax on time. Good luck getting them to pay the late fees. CopperHound fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Mar 12, 2015 |
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Mar 12, 2015 04:13
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CopperHound posted:Oh, If you have an impound account wrapped in with your mortgage, make sure they are actually paying your insurance and property tax on time. Good luck getting them to pay the late fees. Waive that escrow. Also, gently caress everyone involved with the home buying/selling process (and auto buying/selling too for that matter).
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Mar 12, 2015 13:18
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Speaking of Realtor(TM)s, any updates on that horrible poo poo house that the guy was still throwing money at last time I checked?
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Mar 12, 2015 13:31
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Hoodwinked house you mean? Still fixing poo poo. He's also become a crusader against unlicensed contractors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsdRjR6oK4Q
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Mar 12, 2015 13:52
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Collateral Damage posted:Hoodwinked house you mean? Still fixing poo poo. Stuff like that is why I didn't but a flipped house. My house is old, buy I'm the third owner and know most of the work that was done. That said, this guy is an rear end in a top hat. When at the beginning he finds out one of the cabinet doors wasn't attached I can't see how he wouldn't have seen that in the walkthrough or earlier. He was plenty negligent. And he called a building inspector on a neighbor. Friendly.
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Mar 12, 2015 14:09
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WeaselWeaz posted:Stuff like that is why I didn't but a flipped house. My house is old, buy I'm the third owner and know most of the work that was done. Some of the stuff with that dudes house isn't exactly "flipped in a terrible way" more so being just you bought a really bad house that wasn't built well to begin with. The stuff he goes on and on and on about being stuff the flippers did is in part stuff that the original builder of the house could skimped out on. It still doesn't change the fact it sucks really bad, but hell its not just one dude's fault or negligence here.
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Mar 12, 2015 17:25
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Well, yes and no. A lot of it -is- one dude's fault for negligence. His home inspector.
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Mar 12, 2015 17:43
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Believing that it's reasonable for a home inspector to identify those kinds of issues is a reassuring fantasy, and little more. All of the serious issues were hidden behind drywall and under concrete where no inspector can look. A very determined expert might have identified some more of the issues with enough time and a thermal camera, but that goes far beyond the established standards for home inspection.
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Mar 12, 2015 18:19
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WeaselWeaz posted:Stuff like that is why I didn't but a flipped house. My house is old, buy I'm the third owner and know most of the work that was done. Not calling the building inspector on a neighbor, but likely contractors operating illegally for a cut rate. Sure, cheap labor and whatnot, but I wouldn't want someone loving up an asbestos removal in my house.
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Mar 12, 2015 19:11
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Leperflesh posted:Yes, it's just literally impossible that a realtor could ever be a decent human being who cares about her customers. If you become a realtor you lose your soul: all realtors are scum, always. The reason for the negative association is that if a realtor talks you out of a house they make no money, Its always a good time to buy prices always go up. They seem to all have the same check list of pointless poo poo they want you to do to sell a house. Plus there was that whole housing bubble realtors fed into. gently caress I remember reading thehousingbubbleblog.com in 08. It seemed ever realtor ever interviewed would say "its a great time to buy housing always goes up, its not a bubble" Oh I own a hand full of properties I have an agent that shops stuff to me, lets me know before things hit the market. I consider him scum for three reasons. 1) he colluded with another agent to get me a sale, told me what the counter offers were. 2) even when I looked at some total loving dogs. I poo poo you now i saw 4 houses in one day and 3 of them belonged in this thread. Even as he exasperated shook his head at what we were seeing he just couldnt help himself and start up talking the place. 3) a deal we had fell threw it was a short sale, the dude living there short selling the house was taking his time to get out. If we closed and he was still in the house we would have an eviction situation. The realtor was postive he would move out. When we asked him to use his part of the commission to bond a deposit should we get a squatter. He declined. So we walked and then i had him calling me trying to mislead me about not getting my deposit back if I didnt close. I m glad your mom had a good relationship with her agent but the incentives in that profession are not in your favor.
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Mar 12, 2015 20:19
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