Realtor vs FSBO, are real estate agents lower than dirt yet?
A new study by Northwestern University professors compared homes sold by Realtors and FSBO's in one city, Madison Wisconsin. The surprising result was that FSBO's did better. Read all about it. There are asterisks to consider.
Then in the NY Times comments on the article, I loved the first one. "My house sold in 10 days, but I can absolutely say I sold the house, not her (agent). She did nothing but put it on MLS. I scrubbed, painted, cleared, decluttered, rearranged, reaccessorized, and staged the daylights out of my house." and then, thankfully, a reply to that angry and delusional comment by another commenter was perfectly on target, "That is part of the process of getting a home ready for sale, and the agent is neither required nor expected to do that job. I seriously doubt I would make the decision to sell my home myself."
Thanks, I was beginning to think I didn't do my job well because I didn't clean the house for the seller. 
There are good real estate agents and there are bad real estate agents and there are real estate agents who are neither good nor bad, they are just agents. It's like every other business in the world.
The media coverage of the "sancrosanct" 6 % commission is stirring many emotions. Many of the posters in the NY Times comments referred to it, most of the posts were anti real estate agents, a few were pro real estate agents but on balance, the consumers felt they were overpaying and getting less for their money.
Reality. 6 % is not sancrosanct. It is not fixed. Commissions are negotiable. Find a good real estate agent. You get what you pay for.
One of the interesting things about real estate is that a veteran and knowledgeable real estate agent might charge the same as a real estate agent who "graduated" from real estate school just the day before. That doesn't seem fair but if you want to use or pay the rookie, that is your decision. As I pointed out in one of the most popular posts I've written, "Search for an agent instead of a house", choose wisely when selecting an agent to represent you.
With so much anti real estate agent sentiment around today, I wonder if real estate agents responsible for global warming, the war in Iraq, the crisis in Darfur, the high cost of gas and many if not all of the problems in the world. We may not even be as popular as George W. Bush with his abysmal approval rating.
Oh well. Are real estate agents lower than dirt yet? 