Essentially I do agree with you. I would say however that many industries in our country exist as a product of our society.
If our tax roll was more simplistic I could do my own taxes and would not have to hire a CPA.
I also agree with your statement about the level of skill required for a real estate agent. Sometimes I feel like a broken record because I am consistently complaining about peer in my industry.
However even with all that said, and even though my brokerage is a second business, I do feel I provide a useful service to my clients. I also recieve gracious compliments on my service which does give me faith that what I do is helpful.
So lets dive into some of yoru suggestions. Getting a database together to provide all of the sold information and making it public would be useful. However would it include market time? Would it include cancelled, expired, and withdrawn listings as well? As a Realtor those are other factors that are important to me. When I sit down with clients I think it is important for them to know that sort of stuff. For instance, today a guy that works for a mortgage broker called me to list his house. He showed me a 6 month sales record he obtained from a title company. He wanted to use these comps to price his home. I agreed it was useful but I showed him that for the same 6 month period the sum of expired, cancelled, and withdrawns exceeded the number of sales by almost twice as much. I also showed him that the pending to active ratio was 2 to 9!
Now interpretation of these numbers is not rocket science either. It is very basic. However, it should be pointed out that just posting the solds is (in my humble opinion) not sufficient in determining pricing of your home.
Now when you broke down real estate transactions most of your argument discussed financing. To me one of the biggest problems with real estate today is the close relationship between real estate and financing. I only do real estate and I do not do loans. In fact the transactions that I have the most problems with are the ones where the broker on the other side is a mortgage guy, not a Realtor. I absolutely believe that these industries need much more seperation. However if you look at a closing statement the sellers closing statement has nothing to do with the buyers financing. Sellers fees generally include splitting escrow, purchasing title insurance for the buyer, county transfer tax, (in SD it is 1.10 per 1000 bucks), buyers home warranty, natural hazard and zone disclosure report, pest control report, transaction coordination, and any payoff fees you may have for paying off your lender. Most closing statements on the buyers side indeed are ted by financing charges but the appraisal fee, physical inspection and any other inspections will be in there as well, and dont forget title insurance for the lender.
So all the frustration that you expressed about closing costs is well understood by me, but …. these fees are going to be there even if you do a FSBO.
I ABSOLUTELY AGREE with you about compensation for realtors. I broke it down hourly and it is crazy. (See my previous long post) I will also heartily agree that the industry has made ridiculous amounts of money because of the run up in homes.
However there are those of us out there who do provide a very good service to consumers at a very low cost. You just have to look around.
Again, I was not offended by your post at all. I hear your frustration and agree with you.
