You have extrapolated much into the lawsuit debate. I mean there are a lot of “what if” scenarios that one can theorize. I guess if I came home and found my client / co-defendant in bed with my wife that could also dissolve the “team” too. In the end you seem to be set on your beliefs that a knowledgeable, competent and well insured agent would be of no benefit to you in a litigated transaction…well then, so be it.
As far as your statement questioning the intrinsic value of an agents service doubling over the last seven years (an affect of inflated home price increases), well.. I do agree with you on this. Just remember that real estate commissions are negotiable. I live in Ventura County and the homes here are expensive. I routinely cut my commission (often deeply) to make a deal work. I own my own company so I am liberty to do this, note that some agents out there are not. Many brokers enforce a nothing less than 5% rule on their agents.
Our current RE market is filled with new agents who got in when the market was booming. Many of these folks quickly came to believe that they deserved a large commission check on each transaction (regardless of the amount of work they put in). These agents believe this simply because they know no different, for them the money has always been easy. I know from past experience that many of these agents will not be working in real estate by this time next year.
Understand that I am going to rant here and that this is not directed at you or anyone in particular, however this needs to be said and I guess this space is as good as any, so here goes.
I am certainly not a defender of the average salesperson. However I have been lurking on this board for quite some time and I realized straight away that what first appears to be a pent up hatred for real estate agents is actually a bipolar form of jealously. Allow me to explain.
There are a lot of post here from people that go on and on about how stupid agents are, what little service they provide, how little they really know and what little actual work they do for those big, fat, tremendous commission checks..yada..yada..yada.
Lets face the facts, If these people truly believed in their heart that being a realtor was so easy and the money so tremendous and the life style so grand, they would not be wasting their time posting here, they would be rushing out to get their license. It is kind of like they want believe what they are writing but in the back of their minds they either know better or worse yet, don’t know better and lack the balls to plunge into the business. In either case it is silly. It is analogous to someone believing their gardener makes $300K a year for pushing around a lawn mower. Then that person spends hours on end posting on a gardening site complaining how stupid and overpaid gardeners are, instead of going out and buying a lawn mower.
