Other than insurance and marketing, what do most brokers do to “earn” these large cuts of an agent’s commissions?
Why don’t most agents just go independent after the standard years of service, etc.?[/quote]
I’ll go out on a limb here. I think big name brand brokers are experts at stripping hopeful, new and inexperienced agents of their commissions.
With commissions in general,sometimes they are a windfall regardless of the split. This perception probably fuels much discontent towards Realtors. The amount of work agents do and don’t get paid for gets over-looked. Still, I can see why buyers and sellers hate to see it happen. My response and I think that of many agents, is to somehow arrange for compensation be aligned with the amount of marketing, effort and time a client requires.
If there isn’t a high client to sale ratio and you do have a high “image” overhead that can come with working for the big guys, you can’t afford to do this because of all the hours worked and other expenses applicable, with people who never pull the trigger. In my experience and generally speaking, big offices have worse commission splits, expect their agents to maintain a pretty high image standard, beat the bushes constantly and work with clients who are higher risk to be non-performers.( I have never worked in one. These are observations gleened from interviews when I was looking to hang my license somewhere) Under these circumstances, it could be hard to share much commission even on a windfall type deal. I don’t know anything about the broker willingness to rebate a portion of their own split. My independent broker’s policy is that we both take the same hit and he does not care what it is.
