Reatlor should not even be a job
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
52 points (96.4% liked)
Technology
84830 readers
4024 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I was glad to pay the 2% commission so that all I had to do was tell them I had my late grandmothers apartment for sale, and then roughly a month later get a buy offer to sign.
I shouldn't be allowed to pay someone to manage the house searching and buying process for me?
When employers are forced to pay us a % of revenue alongside our salary, then we'll talk.
% based commissions on home sales incentivize rising home prices. They incentivize fast sales too, even if it may go contrary to the fiduciary duty they should have.
Many commission based jobs outside of art are bullshit, like auto salesmen. The whole homebuying process could be simplified with an online web form where a buyer and seller put in the information and automated systems handle the rest of the bullshit. Title search as a fee is a great example of something that makes NO SENSE in the 21st century... like most fees surrounding large purchases where they double check you're a real human with a real job on the date of closing the deal. All that shit could be centralized and done for pennies on the dollar. Zero value add for the majority of the process. Any bullshit red tape a realtor may or may not navigate is a sign of poor process which could be changed. I do realize I pointed out something with mortgages that is only tangentally related to realtors, but my point is that many levels of the process are a problem from leeches trying to get their cut of the big fat fucking pie.
Someone could still be paid by the hour to stage homes and schedule open houses without the commission. If all you're doing is looking for open houses it really should be no more than finding somebody on fiverr or taskrabbit... or just a fucking filter for zillow, redfin or whatever website.
Anyone who makes a living from a role like a realtor - of which there are MANY out there - will be against practically everything i've said. I don't expect upvotes, I expect to be dog piled. There's reality and what people want to believe though, and the reality is that most of the process is bullshit to give a giant fat commission for people able to pull a fast one on unsuspecting buyers and sellers.
You are making some assumptions there that would be apparent if you worked in the industry (which I don’t, to be clear). For example, people absolutely need a title search done when they buy a home, if nothing else so they know that they aren’t dealing with a scammer who doesn’t own the property, and to make sure they know there aren’t any nasty easements that you wouldn’t want to live with.
I understand that TODAY the title search process is a total shitshow because of a bunch of disparate data sources, so you need someone to track things down. I've never done a title search personally because that's not my job, i'm a tech worker though and understand how technology works.
Zero reason why this couldn't be in a database somewhere at a nationwide level and mandatory for real estate transactions. It might take years to do the transition, but it could be done. It could have been started in 2008 when the market crashed as part of mortgage reform and already be here today, 18 years later.. but it wasn't.
It's like turbotax and all the tax preparers stopping us from moving to another option, because they lobby the government to avoid changing it so they can keep money. It's a racket. The government already has the data sources to know what your transactions were. For most people who are W2 employees without special circumstances they know everything without you needing to input it.
Any time there's a big money transaction the bullshit leeches come in and try to make a living off of a niche specialty because their payday is a small portion of the overall transaction. It's in nearly every single aspect of our lives. It's the credit card processors, it's the bank overdraft fees and minimum balance fees, it's every house and auto transaction, it's nearly every legal process. It's in health insurance with MASSIVE contracts negotiated with any business of any real size out there. You name it, some bullshit exists to make you pay more. Just because it is the way it works today does NOT mean it needs to be the way it works in the future. If we just look at our problems and say "well that's the way it works, and I won't make more money by changing it" we'll never improve anything.
You realize Realtors are not required to charge a %? And in fact many of them do not.
Define many. Most often there's a buyer fee and a seller fee and the vast majority of the time it's a percentage. I've never seen any evidence that a significant percentage of realtors will do this outside of this structure. To me it's very much like doordash fees where the work effort put in is not proportional to the fees. If you buy a steak dinner for two and have it delivered a 21% tip can really be up there. Two burritos and some chips are just as heavy and involve the exact same work effort to deliver but that 21% is much lower of a tip. For houses It biases realtors exponentially towards more expensive properties. It's a bullshit system.
Define many
No? Lots. Thousands.
Most often there's a buyer fee and a seller fee and the vast majority of the time it's a percentage
It doesn't have to be. That's the point.
I've never seen any evidence that a significant percentage of realtors will do this outside of this structure.
So then don't give a significant percentage of Realtors your business.