Realtor Fees

[rthutchens]

We are considering selling our house and I was wondering what other people have paid in realtor fees. Is 6% typical?

 

[CarolinaMomOf3boys]

I work for a real estate office and yes, that is typical...do you have a realtor in mind? If not, my office is certified through RELO and I would be glad to find you a realtor, if needed!

 

[jennifer293]

in TN here as well....6% for homes and 10% for land is the going rate around here, but some realtors will negotiate their fee..

 

[Chicago526]

5% in the Chicago area is typical. I hear agents are sometimes willing to negotiate on their fees, so it never hurts to ask. Just remember, they don't keep all of the commision. The buyer's agent gets half and usually your agents broker gets a cut too, so there isn't a whole lot of wiggle room usually.

 

[brookelizabeth]

It is illegal for a REALTOR (one who belongs to a Board of REALTORS) to say anything it typical, instead they will tell you why they present a certain amount.

But, everything is negotiable.

We have our home listed right now and negoitaed with our REALTOR for 5%.

PP is correct, the agent only gets a small percentage. Their Broker gets a cut, the selling agent and selling broker.

 

[PinkRhombus]

It's 6% around here, but if you have a seller's realtor AND a buyer's realtor in the same transaction (which you SHOULD...never be represented by the same realtor as the seller...conflict of interest), each realtor would net 3%

Sometimes you can get them to come down in the %, or pick up part of the costs of, say, a furnace replacement, just to get the sale done and over with. Time is money.

 

[jmminarik]

This is like the 4th Plate of Shrimp moment I had this week. (google it if you don't get it! )

I was just reading about how the commission thing works the other day at
http://www.comcast.net/finance/forwhatitsworth/872/appraisalscommissionsandfeesohmy/ You have to scroll past some stuff to about the middle of the page.

 

[mackeysmom]

Hi -

I "interviewed" four realtors a few months ago (Long Island, NY) - the first three quoted me 6%. The fourth quoted me 5%. After going back to the other three to say "sorry, but I'm going to go with a realtor who will do 5%", two of the remaining three went down to 4.5%.

It's worth a shot to negotiate - don't ever jump at the first offer.

Hope this helps,
Laura

 

[disneymom2003]

EVERYTHING is negotiable. We have never paid the "going" rate when selling our home.

 

[neatokimmo]

I just bought a house in TN and I saw many full listing papers showing 2% to listing, 2% to seller. But 6% is still standard. That is why we are going to sell the condo on our own, they have appreciated so slowly, the Realtor fees put us in the hole!

 

[loonytoony]

Just remember you get what you pay for sometimes. The goal is to sell your house. I would go with whoever has the best plan.

 

[surfgirl]

If someone goes to 4.5%, check what the split it. Make sure that 'your' realtor (selling side) isn't taking the entire cut out of the 'other' realtor (the buyers) side.

If there are comparable houses in the neighborhood, I would check what they are paying - both halves. Honestly, if you have a buyer that comes in and one house is paying 1% more than the other house, where is the incentive ? Realtors should be doing the best thing for their client, but if two houses are fairly equal, make sure you have the better incentive for your house than a similar house.

 

[The_Princess's_Mommy]

I AM a Realtor, so I can speak from experience. Here's my advice:

Commissions are usually negotiable. 6% is common, but some Realtors will take less if it is cleared with their broker.

Keep in mind the commission split. If a house sells for 6%, the listing agent will usually only walk away with about 1 1/2% after all the splits and fees. Your 6% pays for various things: advertising, your Realtor's salary, the selling agent's salary, office fees, etc.

Be wary of Realtors who will list your house for a cheap commission. Will they advertise your house? Will they do open houses? Will they pay a reasonable split to the Realtor who brings the buyer? All these factors will be important for getting the highest number of potential buyers to walk through your door. Your goal is to sell your house quickly and for the highest price possible. Your Realtor wants the same thing.

PM me if you have any specific questions - I have been doing this for many years, and I am happy to give you advice.

 

[carj]

We listed our house for 4 percent several years ago. 3% to the selling agent, 1 % to the listing agent. This was a mother and son team. They were willing to list our house and hoped that we would use them to buy our next house. They would have actually listed it for 3.5% if we bought a house using them.

It got uncomfortable when we were ready to buy because we were moving about 70 miles away. They didn't know anything about the area. (I did, because we were moving back to the town I grew up in.) They did pull up houses for us, but they were not what we were looking for at all. I told them areas of town, price range etc... They kept trying to push us to get a house similar in price to the one we sold. We wanted one that was about 100K less. Plus, they kept pulling up houses in the right town, but the wrong school district. It was kind of like they would throw it together at the last minute and not bother to look at what we had asked for.

Finally, we told them that we were going to use a local realtor. There were several angry phone calls about how we were making them lose money. I felt bad about that, but in our contract, we agreed to list our house at 4%, and if they sold us another house, it would be 3.5%. They were only ever our listing agent, never our buyer's agent.

I kind of got the feeling that they thought that we somehow tricked them, which is just ridiculous. If they had done what we asked, we would have probably used them, in spite of the fact that they didn't know the area.

That was our only experience in selling with a realtor. Next time, we will go with a local person, and get recommendations. This experience was too stressful for me. At the time, we needed that extra 2%, now I would pay it just to get a "full-service" realtor who really listened to me!

 

[rbork]

6 sounds about right but can vary depending on the sale price range of your home. However another viewpoint to consider is...when there is a large inventory of comparable homes... some agents may be more willing to show your home to their buyers over the ones offering less %age. In our experience also, you get what you pay for.
a seasoned well known professional broker may have a better network of other realtors and in turn their buyers over the "ma pa" less known realtor that's willing to "buy" your listing for less %tage.
Oh and also while trying to get to the table w/ an offer. Realtors are sometimes willing to "get the deal done" buy making up a 1-5k difference between the seller and buyer.

 

[DVC-Don]

When we sold our rental townhouses every broker we went to wanted 7%. So we listed them For Sale by Owner. Almost every broker we had gone to called and dropped their request to 4%. We sold both on our own.