I saved $12,000 in commission by listing with Pam McCormick at the Poway Help-U-Sell office. Realtor Adam Rappoport (aka SD Realtor) charges 1% too.
I think most people here don’t have a problem with realtors, but are opposed to the high fees. Realtor fees are high because there is a glut of them, so they have to spend way too much time competing for the few clients out there. They expect the 1 or 2 clients they do get, to pay for the time they spend chasing after clients that get away, LOL.
Realtors should charge an hourly rate or by the service, and that would put an end to people taking advantage of realtors with all kinds of free questions and driving around for months looking at hundreds of houses just to end up buying a house from a different agent. People who take advantage of the free time of realtors raise the price for everybody else, but the system permits it. You can string a realtor along for an entire year, going to Open Houses, being driven around to look at homes, and then decide to not buy or to buy from another agent. That realtor put 10-50 hours into servicing you, and gets nothing from you, but he’s going to stick it to Joe Six-pack for a 5% listing fee. Realtor fees can come down if Jane Six-pack stops stringing along the realtors, dumping her realtor after all the work he’s done for her, and about 2/3 of the realtors get out of the business and do something more productive. Heck, why do we need 1 realtor for every 75 people anyway?