Do I really need a real estate agent to buy a house?

[UnfairPark]

Originally Posted by jiping

Some online listing website (they just IPO at Nasdaq) and their agents already have a large share of real estate transactions in CA.
When you sell an 1MM house, 1.5% rebate is huge.

They may see setback and fights from traditional agents soon. Like what happened to TrueCar years ago.

Let's assume a million dollar home sells 3 times in 10 years with 6% commission every time. Even if price isn't going up with inflation and market changes, by the time fourth buyer comes, commission would add up and he'll have to pay an additional $180k now folded in new price. Wouldn't it be ludicrous to tell him that buyer doesn't pay commission?

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by UnfairPark

Let's assume a million dollar home sells 3 times in 10 years with 6% commission every time. Even if price isn't going up with inflation and market changes, by the time fourth buyer comes, commission would add up and he'll have to pay an additional $180k now folded in new price. Wouldn't it be ludicrous to tell him that buyer doesn't pay commission?

But that's not how housing values work. If a $1M house is stagnant in value for 10 years, each seller will pay $60k in traditional commission to be split between agents & their respective brokerages. You can't keep tacking on commission to the market value (meaning $1M house would sell for $1.18M because each seller is adding the commission to the home value) if the house isn't worth that much and won't appraise for that much. It just doesn't work that way.

[mikestrong]

Originally Posted by Rakin

On a used home, The listing agent has an agreement to charge a certain % of money from the seller. If you don't use an agent the Listing agent can keep the entire amount.

Builders pay agents out of their marketing budget. In almost all cases if you do or don't have an agent it does not affect the sales price of the home.

I've helped probably 400 couples buy new construction. I guarantee I know things you'll never know or think of to ask.

Working for a builder, a buyer will not get any difference in price whether they have a realtor or not. I dont know of any that do.

[some1livesinamerica]

op, i feel your pain. i was in the market to buy a house in the DFW area earlier this year and i ran into the same problem. After doing some extensive research on my own, this is what i have learned.
Texas is a non disclosure state, meaning the sale record of real estates is private information. If you want to have access to the sales record around a particular neighborhood, aka comps, you need to have access to the MLS, the only way to access the MLS is get a real estate license and work under a broker. However, as buyers, there are ways to minimize the cost,
1. negotiate the commission with realtors. i know for a fact that there are realtors in DFW that are willing to offer 1.5% rebate on the 3% commission. Some even willing to offer up to 2%. Just keep in mind, if you want the 1.5 or 2% commission, don't expect the realtors to do much for you besides forwarding you the MLS listings and submitting offers for you.
This means you will have to go to open houses yourself, if you find a house that you really like, but it doesn't have an open house and you want a realtor to open the door for you, you probably will not get the 1.5% or 2% rebate.
2. get your own license and work under a broker. Depending the price of the house that you want to buy, it might worth it.
3. find houses that are FSBO

*after reading some of the replies from other people about ways to get around agents, check out opendoor.com, they are flourishing in the DFW area, they are like carmax, except they buy and sell houses, carmax sells cars.