Commissions of 6 percent for home sales once were the norm. That’s changing. – The Washington Post <!–
“I knew I needed to move fast, and so when I saw a property online that I liked I contacted a company called SoloPro,” says Sellars. “Twenty minutes later I was in the house with an agent and two hours after that I made an offer. My offer was accepted by 5 p.m. that day after the home had been shown 17 times.”
What’s different about Sellars’s experience is that she opted for an on-demand agent service that doesn’t charge commissions. She paid $25 for email alerts so she could find a property, $50 for the property showing, $100 for an agent to present her offer and $800 for a transaction coordinator. SoloPro will give her a rebate of 3 percent of the purchase price — the equivalent of a typical buyer’s agent commission — at her closing, which she estimates to be about $5,700.
Technology has changed businesses in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago, but even industry insiders say that residential real estate practices have yet to fully adapt to the reality that buyers and sellers have unlimited access to property listings and other information that was once held firmly in the hands of realty agents. That access has led many consumers to question the fees they pay for the services of an agent, commonly 6 percent of the home sales price, including payment to a buyer’s agent and a listing agent, or $30,000 on a $500,000 property sale.
Read more at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/commissions-of-6-percent-for-home-sales-are-the-norm-but-that-is-changing/2016/04/13/91bb758c-fb55-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html
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