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"A real estate transaction is a complicated financial process that does require significant expertise"
Like 60 hours[?] of weekend training?
Now, now, REBear, you're missing the point. Only for a boomer broker is 60 hours of weekend training a problem of insufficient expertise. If the broker is a Gen X or Y-er, 60 hours of weekend training must seem like a fair amount of overkill. Or at least that's what you'd have to believe if you believed the rest of this article.
Strongly agree with REBear. Real estate brokering seems to require a small folder of standard forms and a "for dummies" book.
I also dispute that this is unreasonable:
"Gen X and Y-ers believe in their heart of hearts if they had enough coffee and access to the Internet, they could learn to fly the space shuttle."
Other parts of the gig might be tricky, but how hard could driving be?
You can find out almost anything about a house/buyer online these days--the last purchase date and amount, the type of loan the buyer holds (and initial and fully indexed interest rate and terms, for an ARM), recent sales, tax assessments, I could go on. With a thorough inspection and a RE lawyer, there is really no reason to use an agent anymore, particularly when it winds up adding ~5% to an already overpriced home.
Buyers my age (28) don't need to be driven around to look at 10 different properties on a Sunday--any MLS listing that doesn't have photos probably isn't worth looking at anyway. Zip Realty is my personal favorite-it even shows price reductions! Zip is also partnered with Zillow, so you can get a Zestimate by clicking on a link on the listing page. As soon as some comprehensive local FSBO sites emerge and become widely accepted, I think that will be the true death of RE agents as we know them.
With a thorough inspection and a RE lawyer
Well, that'd be the thing, wouldn't it?
Separate out the conflation of marketing with establishing a fair price and assuring a legal transaction, and you're left with the banal suggestion that information technology ought to be driving down marketing costs.
But assuming that typical buyers of any generation are rushing out to hire their own independent inspectors, demanding impartial appraisals, and hiring lawyers to represent them? If we're talking empirical fact rather than good idea, I'm not sold.
RE agents/brokers will go the way of the travel agent. Remember them?
I also dispute that this is unreasonable:
"Gen X and Y-ers believe in their heart of hearts if they had enough coffee and access to the Internet, they could learn to fly the space shuttle."
I realize that as a boomer I cannot be expected, by definition, to be able to keep up, but I just can't keep bemoaning my inability to keep up.
Last week, as I recall, us boomers were the latch-key children who believed that we could handle any risk at all, like, you know, selling naked calls.
The Gen-Yers, however, were the mollycoddled over-surveilled risk-averse neurotics who couldn't step off the curb without a bicycle helmet.
I, who tend to think I have more in common with my fellow human beings, of any age, than I do with Martians or Realtors, just prefer that we stop reinventing the generational warfare wheel every generation. Poor McLuhan.
Or, as my favorite Gen-Yers like to say, whatever.
1) How is finding a trustworthy RE lawyer more difficult than finding a trustworthy RE Agent? Whatever morality joke you throw at one would surely stick to both.
2) I found my home inspector online, and that was pre-2000. (Eagle home inspection, which I think was composed of one cantankerous old guy at the time.)
Can't, can't, can't. How did you Nancies ever get to the moon with negative attitudes like that.
The RE industry is in for a change - for sure. Certainly the simple aspects of buying a house, shopping around, finding comps, estimating the 'real' price, can be more easily done on the computer. In fact it already is.
My agent has a program. I tell him the search criteria, then it sends me the MLS listing of houses that match. What's the agent value added then? The last house we sold (with this agent) was a tough one - there were a number of issues that we needed the experience of this agent for. Our agent is unusual though, he is really good. I'm not sure how it would have gone with an average one ...
At any rate, any industry which depends on some degree to information obviously has to adapt to the internet, regardless of the generation they are selling to.
PS - why are boomers so obsessed with generations? I'm a X - I suppose, and the clubbiness of the boomers annoys me. Oh right, I remember now, that's why we are the X generation - we're too hard to typecast ...
so if GDP < inflation is this a recession ?
Rick Santelly just said the "stagflation" word 10 times on CNBC
Based on my experience with this blog, I still have to say that I think boomers are more likely to recognize irony than their children are. I insist that this has something to do with the fact that we were taught by old farts like McLuhan. I await the explanation for how we managed to fail to teach our own children that sometimes the best response to inanity is to deal with it ironically. In any case, you have to watch out for people like me, who learned to write ironic sentences in the old days before the invention of the emoticon. To us hopeless old farts, using those things is like speeding down the highway with a radar detector on. How unsportsmanlike.
I also still think it's hard to find a reliable RE attorney if you don't look for one. I can't believe that we're seeing so many things like "cash-back" deals if everyone is hiring an attorney.
man, u guys are old! HAHAHAHA!!
"Rick Santelly just said the "stagflation" word 10 times on CNBC" - theroxylandr
evil grin
Well, maybe that's not quite right. It isn't so much an evil grin I'm wearing as it is an...
evil grin of abject terror
I'd very much prefer to be wrong, lol.
GDP at 1.3% but PCE still high.
It's called stagflation and you can thank the Fed for this mess.
The economy is about to take one giant crap that will likely last through 2008 and have a major effect on the elections.
Listing agents are helpful. Buyers' agents, however, are soon to be a thing of the past. The times I've used a b.a. recently, I've not only known more about the house/neighborhood because of extensive internet research, including what they paid, how they financed, how much they still owe, I've also known the location better and have had to give directions to the b.a... And I'm paying thousands for that? I don't think so.
bacon dreamz, i r pwned.
Uber-pwned.
Its a strange situation when you have such easy credit that properties can be exchanged with no legal professional involved that is trusted by each side or indeed any professional who has a reputation based on honesty to maintain.
How does that work over in the US? Seems in fact that it does not work so well.
It is unusual not to have a lawyer do this in the UK system, but it can be done.
The legal transfer can all be done over the telephone - trust is key here. These guys have too much to lose by fiddling a transaction since without certification as lawyers they can never work again as lawyers. It can be done by amateurs but it is more a less a monopoly for lawyers and more or less people accept that.
Valuers too are part of a small group of professionals who 'do the circuit' of valuations. They too are trusted and are usually part of firms with highly qualified partners and what not. For them it is money for old rope but they can be relied upon to give a decent value taking all into account. Reputation is everything in this sort of game.
The idea that joe bloggs can value a house for a bank based on him doing some course at the local college is not in my reality. These guys are Royal society chartered land surveyors and valuers or something. They also do the certified surveys and peg positions and what not for new sites and disputes on behalf of the Royal land title survey whatever it is called.
I just want to throw my 2 cents that while I think the word "stagflation" is applicable for today we are at the low range of this thing.
In 70's inflation was above 15% at some point. We are officially at 4% chain deflator in this report.
It's enough to prevent Feds from cutting, but not enough to make them raise rates to 5.5%.
stagflation-lite
"In 70's inflation was above 15% at some point. We are officially at 4% chain deflator in this report."
Look, you may feel that Greenspan's changes to the CPI and other inflation metrics were a good thing. That position is beside the point.
But we need to stop comparing a number from one set of measurements (modern inflation metrics) to another totally different set of measurements (inflation metrics from the 70s). Otherwise these claims are like saying 20 centimeters is farther away than 1 mile.
Having performed real estate transactions with and without an agent, I can attest that they generally charge far more than they're worth. The legal forms are boilerplate, and after filling them out, you can have an attorney check them for a small fee (the escrow company can recommend one). Assessing the house is as easy as looking up recent sales in your neighborhood on the public records, or for a few hundred dollars you can hire an appraiser. The only trap is one of personality; if you can't remain reasonable and objective about your own property, you may have trouble making a sale.
Let's celebrate stagflation with a rally!
I just want to throw my 2 cents that while I think the word "stagflation" is applicable for today we are at the low range of this thing.
In 70's inflation was above 15% at some point. We are officially at 4% chain deflator in this report.
More important, the 70s inflation came from rising wages, today's inflation has come from rising borrowing. Long-term these two scenarios have very different outcomes.
It's getting harder for the Fed to thread the needle, inflation above 4% and a failing economy. What to do, what to do? Hmm, maybe do nothing and next quarter will be OK. Cross your fingers and hope.
Assessing the house is as easy as looking up recent sales in your neighborhood on the public records
I hate to say this, anotherajh, but that just makes my blood run cold.
Part of the whole problem with people overpaying for RE lately has been this approach to "comps": just look at contract price paid for something else that looks kind of similar.
That is not how a professional appraiser uses comps.
To clarify: that is how an idiot broker uses comps.
The fed can lower wages are not that high:
CNNMoney.com: 404 Page Not Found
The sharemarket has been powering upwards through some horrible housing statistics recently, and a much-quoted reason has been 'the strength of the rest of the economy' and so expectations of continued profit growth.
I wonder if today's GDP numbers just kicked out one leg of the stool ...
ac,
Here's a blast from the past (1973). I think there's a little more to it than just our debt, otherwise I would be a pure deflationist.
Nixon's Other Crisis: The Shrinking Dollar
The root cause of the dollar's decline abroad is the simple fact that there are too many dollarssome $80 billion ricocheting round the world. They have accumulated abroad because the U.S. during the past 20 years has spent overseasin purchases of foreign goods, military expenditures and business investmentsfar more than it has taken in from foreign countries. An oversupply of dollars, like an oversupply of potatoes, tends to drive down the price.
Can you imagine it? $80 billion ricocheting around the world? $80 billion seem like such a huge number!
Okay, I'm being a bit sarcastic and I apologize. I was attempting to do it for comedic effect I assure you. What's going to happen if trillions of dollars richocheting around the world feels the need to start hoarding hard assets? Our dollar can't fall endlessly without costs going up at some point.
from jim:
this is only the 1st guess of 1st quarter GDP. Remember what happened with 4th quarter GDP? By the time they finished revising it, growth was cut in half from the first estimate.
It's amazing. You can start a thread around here on a serious topic, and get people derailing it with filler. Then you can put out a filler topic and get people derailing it with substance. The latter doesn't bother me at all, but the former is nerve-wracking.
When CR gets around to posting on GDP today, can we all agree to talk about GDP in the comments thereon? I'm happy to put up an alternative post on a rorshach topic for the overflow . . . like this one . . .
Just a thought. I enjoy OT as much as anyone else, but I can't be the only one who thinks we've lost all semblance of self-control about that lately.
Sorry, tanta. I know it must be frustrating to make a post and everyone talks about something else.
Maybe you could throw up a GDP placeholder post until CR gets cracking for the day.
I await the explanation for how we managed to fail to teach our own children that sometimes the best response to inanity is to deal with it ironically.
The Boomers I know had no problem teaching irony. The problem came from the reaction to their inevitable inanity.
Oh, the irony!
"told these consumers Realtors are anti-competitive and greedy and, by the way, you may not even need them."
As Homer would say: Prove us wrong, Realtors. Prove us wrong.
Which post should we follow for instructions on flying the space shuttle?
How to fly the space shuttle
Tanta is in ur marketz securitizing ur mortgagez.
does anyone know how many dollars are outside of us? china has breached 1.2 trilion mark few days ago, japan is said to have over 2 trilion and i dont know how many dollars are in europe.
Steve, I have no objection to us straying off topic when the topic, as in this thread, is so stray-offable. I mean, I actually was thinking when I posted it that it would be something to kill time with until CR gets up and gets his teeth into the GDP data. So it's not like I'm offended or anything that we easily stray from some fluff about realtors.
But we--I include myself--have had a bad habit lately of making the threads unreadable with too many dogs in the hunt. I'm as mortgage-obsessed as anyone can be, and it drives me nuts to be reading along on some GDP-thread wherein you guys who are better economists than I are making great arguments and supplying great facts, but you keep getting interrupted with random links and copies of the latest sorry news from the mortgage side. As an example. Surely if it drives me nuts, it must make you all who are less mortgage-obsessed even nutsier.
So I just think we need to let our commenters shine--they are the best bunch of commenters on the web. That means having some sensitivity about not constantly going OT right when people are getting a very educational conversation going on the post topic. I'm certainly willing to put out a new post when the comments make it appear that other things must be discussed, but I won't always do that immediately, because I don't want to push substantive posts down the page. It's often a dilemma.
Anyway, as always your viewpoints on this are welcome. That includes you lurkers, by the way.
RE agents/brokers will go the way of the travel agent.
Great example.
As a gen-x type who just went through a round of trying to buy something recently and failed (prices just too sticky despite the fundamentals: sellers and sellers agents too stubborn or outright spiteful), I often knew more about a property prior to a showing than my agent simply by doing some digging online. Aside from getting me in to see "by appointment only" properties, my agent provided no value to the process.
Oh, Tanta doesn't think GenY can write irony? Whatever! How's this: I find discussing stagflation more exciting than touring a romanian bacon factory! (this is not true, romanian bacon factories are awesome, stagflation makes me daydream about horses and unicorns.)
Just to stay on topic and not irritate Tanta, the problem with doing some real estate transaction completely online is it only works in the parts of the country that are included in Zillow-type sites. Zillow has no data for my zip code although some houses are on Realtor websites.
We bought this house by seeing an ad in the (gasp) paper, talking to the owner and doing the paperwork through an attorney. Our two previous homes were bought with the aid of a broker but that was waaaaay back when before electrons had been invented.
I am not so sure the idea of comparable value has much meaning to someone who wants to live in the house. What do I care if other houses in the neighborhood cost more or less than mine as long as mine costs what I am willing to pay?
tanta - part of the problem is the format of blogs. message boards with threads make it easier to keep topics together and minimize hijacking. This blog has a big enough community to make the switch, I think. Each entry from you guys generates 50-100 comments. maybe you can make this into something bigger.
Of course Tanta doesn't think Gen Y can't write irony. She merely thinks Gen Y cannot spell irony.
But I am too busy being ur marketz securitizing ur mortgagez to care about your casual orthography. Doods.
Someday I want to hear about where "bacon dreamz" came from.
I agree with rob d. Calculated Risk needs some forums.
I would be tail end of Gen X and bought my home through a realtor. While the house we settled on required a buyers agent (gov't foreclosure), I can't say I regret having a realtor. I don't have a problem with DIY, but expertise is often worth the price. If I purchase again, I may just run the documents by an attourney instead or use a discount service. Like the travel agent, the real estate broker won't go away, they'll specialize. For example, quite a bit of travel to Europe is still arranged by travel agents.
i came from the distant land of Canada with the hope of being involved in the stupendous american mortgage market. when i moved to the great bacon-fed land of america 2 years ago, i had to re-learn my english skillz by listening to the youth and entertainers on the mtv channel and text messaging my english teacher (who is korean). apologies for many mistakes! My resilient american colleagues have taught me much about the mystical world of securitization!!
so you think commercial real estate brokers will go bye bye too?
what about enterprise salesmen?
what about traveling manufactured goods salesmen?
aren't there online clearing houses for that stuff?
hell, wont investment bankers go bye bye too? i mean, there are global capital markets, who needs someone to "find" money for them?
i'm just curious as to where you think the elimination of the salesmen will end...
The thing about irony is the discovery rather than the invention...unlike sarcasm/satire which is a craft.
Consider Billionairess Gates on the horn recently about Education and how we need to infuse the presidential campaigns with it's importance. [We're talking about you dummies, people who missed out on owning MSFT shares.] NPR entertained Melinda on this topic despite the Foundation's miserable failure in the Seattle area where many millions were spent trying to improve lousy high school test scores...the latest computers, the latest software --all for not. This personal potential that is the core for MSFT's philosophy (when it is not trying to squash competitors in the market place of course) just doesn't work in some localities it appears.
So, many millions will be spent nationally so we can be as smart as Melinda and Bill...
Now it may be comforting to know that the voters are getting more educated or even getting more realigned to think that education is a good thing (whatever MSFT thinks that might be), but the dropout rate in high schools like the participation rate in those elections might not budge an inch for all those heart-warming sentiments...that continue to add to the richest man's wealth by extracting OS fees from the rest whose failure to participate in the growth of this economy is such a throbbing concern to Melinda Gates.
Heh! You think I'm going to fall for that story? You left out the part about how you discovered an unclaimed excess spread reserve account that I can help you repatriate if only I will send you my SSN and routing number, which part is a requirement for any online sob story about why your English syntax suckz.
dc1000, what caught my attention was not the suggestion that people can or seem to want to DIY. It's that the response of the realtor community (as described in this article) is to meet people's desire for unmediated access to information by pretending to give them unmediated access to information. It sounds a bit to me like "we will come up with marketing strategies to sell you realtors," rather than "we will focus on providing that part of the expertise the internet cannot give you."
Tanta doesn't beleive me
curls up in a ball and cries
so you think commercial real estate brokers will go bye bye too?, etc.
Struck a nerve, I see. Nobody said even residential agents will "go bye bye" entirely. A good proportion will, though.
how many are actual working realtors anyway? everyone and their mother has a license, it ain't hard to get one. they make no money doing it, count it as a second job, and it never goes into unemployment data. and the game goes on...
"we will focus on providing that part of the expertise the internet cannot give you."
Which is? Aside from providing access to properties, I don't see what value realtors add that a day's reading at Barnes and Noble doesn't (the books NOT by realtors, that is).
anonyX,
A competent professional can always provide information that you can't get in a mass produced book. Hint, if the book costs less than $50, there isn't much worthwhile in it. This is not to say that that book isn't more valuable than a lot of realtors.
My own experience is that boomers tend to be obsessed about who is making money. Gen X seems far more accepting of the fact that someone is making money. Sales techniques geared to Gen X focus on benefit/features. Gen Y focuses more on options and customization. Sales techniques with boomers typically involve a baseball bat.
Some salesmen have disappeared. Digital equipment used to have salesmen for computers. They would demonstrate the product, show all of the customizable features, produce brochures. Now those are minimum wage retail functions.
i've saved all my clients money by artful negotiation that is in excess of the fees offered by the seller (to any ole realtor!).
i've also gained my selling clients more in sales than they would have ordinarily themselves as well.
hell i spend about $5k in marketing materials and advertising for a run-of-the-mill listing.
sometimes we spend $50k.
what people continuously forget is that the commission structure is there to reward agents for taking risks. the risks are working with people that never buy or sell.
not many people are wiling to spend an hourly rate with someone to get where they need to go if they dont even know where they are going.
and like any sales job, the fee is not about time, its about making it happen.
seriously - its possible today to sell your house by yourself.
why don't more people do it?
Tanta,
I certainly understand your concern about the use of comps for appraisal. This can certainly be problematic if you don't know much about the homes other than the square footage. However, in newer neighborhoods it's often a pretty clear cut comparison. I've done regression fits both to predict the size scaling, and time trends, and there are amazingly few outliers.
That said, for more complicated cases, it's probably a good idea to hire an appraiser.
You're right, anotherajh, that you can get access in many neighborhoods to enough information to assure that your comps are pretty darn comparable properties. That certainly helps.
But what an appraisal actually tells me is information about the buyers and sellers, not just the property. In other words, I expect a good appraisal to tell me that all three comps sold recently at price X, but also that all three involved 100% financing at a price higher than the original list and sellers who had owned for less than one year at the time of the sale. If that's the case, then I expect to see the appraiser adjust those comps down to something more sensible to account for this feature of the market. In other words, I want comparable sales, not just comparable prices and properties. An appraiser uses comparable sales. A broker price opinion uses comparable prices. That tends to be why they often get different numbers. In any case, an appraisal is still supposed to give you market value, not optimal price. If we had stuck to appraising things, instead of just pricing them, we might have avoided a lot of the bubble, since bubble prices always assumed that the market would stay as distorted as it was last week, and a simple recent-price comparison cannot identify a distortion.
A competent professional can always provide information that you can't get in a mass produced book.
Again: Which is?
I admit that finding decent books is tough, but doable. My main concerns were procedural (what, who, when). My agent told me the same information - which supports my point. The only information my agent provided that I didn't get from books or government websites (assessors, registrars of deeds, census) was whether there were other interested buyers (there always are, of course) and what offer would likely be accepted (usally more than I thought). Oh, and I saw "agent appointment only" properties.
By my experience, Gen X and Y types usually what to know and do for themselves, and boomers want to get concierge service and say "my agent", "my attorney", etc.. As RE becomes more transparent, agents will become superflous. The travel industry analogy is a very good one.
"Zip is also partnered with Zillow, so you can get a Zestimate by clicking on a link on the listing page"
The Zestimates from Zillow are only accurate in areas with recent sales. If you're buying in a neighborhood that hasn't has much turnover lately, your Zestimate may be inaccurate. This maybe be especially true now that says are slowing down.
Tanta,
Yes, I agree for purposes of evaluating a loan, and for the sake of better informed buyers, an appraisal as you describe would be preferable. But as you point out, real estate agents don't do this; indeed my analysis, as simple as it was, was far more thorough than anything I've ever seen from an agent. Which gets to the central point I was trying to make: realtors(tm) generally charge an excessive amount for the service they provide.
Best,
I can't disagree with you there, anotherajh. Not only can individual buyers do the same shoddy analysis that re-litters do, they can actually do better analysis if they have the ability to understand the information that is available and the skepticism to consider its source.
I was responding, I guess, to the idea (not, obviously, yours) that buyers possessed with this information now have all they need, except possibly an inspection and a lawyer to glance at the deed.
It has never been true that lenders use appraisals to control sales prices. People are always free to pay whatever they want and can get a seller to accept for a property. Lenders just insist on using the lower of sales price or appraised value to set the maximum loan amount, because the lender has to discount for anyone willing to pay "above market." What troubles me is the extent to which buyers have been conditioned to see this as in opposition to their own interests, rather than parallel to it. And, of course, a lot of that conditioning has come from re-litters.
Jeez, I hate to break it to this Anspach guy, but even us old Boomer geezers have figured out this durn 'intertubes' thingie (or whatever Ted Stevens calls it). Heck, even our illiterate president seems to have heard of The Google.
AFAICT, the only use realtors currently serve is to bring the code for the lockbox to get you in the front door.
As for the rest, you're on your own. Realtor or no realtor. New listings? Don't make me spend the day making inane small talk with you in your leased Lexus while you cart me around to a bunch of crap I'm not even remotely interested in. Comps? Good luck. I'm better off with Zillow. Advice on writing a contract of sale? Most realtors never learned anything past "You better make it a full price offer with no contingencies. I hear there are other buyers interested."
Bring on the internets, Mr Ansbach! And move out of the way.
AnonyX: "by appointment only", LOL. Let the arrogant pigs sweat for another year. Plenty of housing bust ahead to teach them humility.
Well said, semper fubar. Realtors are simply legalized racketeers. Aside from acting as gatekeeper (can't get you into that place this week), they will also sell you a mortgage (sure it's worth that - and you're approved!) and set you up with an "inspector" (don't forget to clean your AC filter and change your smoke detector batteries twice a year). Here's hoping Coldwell Banker's model fails.
CR I agree.
However today the 'medium is the message
the rest of you are so fricking arrogant to think that your job can't be done by a f*cking monkey.
damn.
I run a multimillion dollar business (or three) aside from brokerage and you all act like i'm some burger flipper.
do you know subrogation means?
do you know how to get money to build a property before you even own it?
do you know how to work a contract and its potential contingencies to its fullest?
doubtful.
and on top of it you dont know which properties are coming for sale nor which ones didnt sell and why and who to talk to about it.
again i ask you-
if it was so f*cking easy, why the hell is there a multibillion dollar broker industry?
geeze o flip.
and dont say collusion because you all have so deftly explained that information is perfect in this market with or without brokers.
the fact is that real estate always has been and always will be an IMPERFECT market and thusly, an industry insider will be able to add value in ways you can't even comprehend.
go ahead laugh at me.
my education trumps 99% of yours. my income does too. not to mention my assets and networth.
dc your entire bussiness model is working because its set up in a city where the marionettes of jas jains so called fraudsters are working
just tell me how much in debt are those congressmans and senators? would a normal person with the same income level of a congressman or a senator get so much money out from the bank as a senator or a congressman can?
from time to time we manage to find out that many politicians are so much in red that casey serin seems to be a rich guy in comparison to them. but somehow the banks dont foreclose on them, no they even give them more money for campaigns.
so i wont argue that you are definitly a very skiled and experienced realtor, i know that from your posts, but even very skilled and experienced can get into big troubles when market goes down.
in your case you have a good location where there are many people who have good income and the bankers love to give them as much money as they need
so you should be thankfull to god and not bloat around how great you are
i have too good education, good income, assets and networth but the truth is in the end we all sleep in only one bed at the time so the wealth and those things are not that important.
all a person really needs is just a place to lay down in night and food to eat.
dc1000, trust me -- you are the exception. I wish you were my realtor. I'm not saying there can't possibly be a realtor who provides value to the client, I'm just saying that 99.9% in fact don't.
DC 1000 -
It helps to be subsidized too. There is a $5,000 first homebuyer credit (not deduction) that one may qualify for if they purchased a home during 2006 in the District of Columbia. And people wonder why DC is still bubbly.
Regarding the rant above.
The idea of homes, condos etc. which are places where people need to live as being a free market theory is absurd. Tax schemes encourage and support the entire ludicrous Monopoly game.
Çaptial was lost to R&D, technology, production, and export sectors.
And, try finding honest people to do business with on a rare high end purchase... not even lawyers--an entirely separate business monopoly with Darth Vader control over your legal rights and remedies --can't be trusted more often than not. Oh, yeah, you're a fool if you still think all you do sue them...
Dead thread, but what the heck:
the rest of you are so fricking arrogant to think that your job can't be done by a f*cking monkey.
damn.
I run a multimillion dollar business (or three) aside from brokerage and you all act like i'm some burger flipper.
do you know subrogation means?
I don't think anyone called you dumb. But it doesn't take much more than a weekend of reading to gain the knowledge necessary to sell real estate. Some burger chains do require more training. Gloating isn't the best way to prove your point.
do you know how to get money to build a property before you even own it?
Talk to a lender? I'm not sure I get what you mean.
do you know how to work a contract and its potential contingencies to its fullest?
doubtful.
Hire an attorney.
and on top of it you dont know which properties are coming for sale nor which ones didnt sell and why and who to talk to about it.
Bingo! Value added. Realtor as gatekeeper.
again i ask you- ... you all have so deftly explained that information is perfect in this market with or without brokers.
the fact is that real estate always has been and always will be an IMPERFECT market
Wrong. The point is that the internet is bringing a sea change to the market. I'm sure there were buggy whip makers who denied the significance of the internal combustion engine, too.
my education trumps 99% of yours. my income does too. not to mention my assets and networth.
Hmmm...
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