Every buyer knows, or at least should know that (a) no broker adds anything to the actual value of a house, and (b) in practical terms, that 7% commission will be added to the END of the mortgage, and therefore you will pay more interest on that extra amount than for the rest of the house.
The broker brings more potential customers to your house.
The SELLER pays the broker's fees.
======================================
Suuuuuuuure he does. And I have this bridge to Manhattan to sell you. There is only ONE lump of money on the table and it comes from the buyer, That crap about how the seller pays the commissions is just a fiction of the real estate industry. ALL the money comes from the buyer. The seller can eat the commission if he is a dolt, or simply because he is desperate because he just bought another house and can't make two payments. This is known to the broker, who tells the buyer how desperate the seller is.
Let's say there is a house that a broker sells for $207,000.
Of this, the broker takes $7,000 in commission. Usually they split this several ways, but the buyer pays $207,000, and then the seller takes $7,000 and pays the broker.
Now if the buyer has no broker, and they make a deal for $203,500, then the seller pays $3,500 less, and the buyer gets $3,500 more. Both benefit by the absence of the broker.
Even if the seller sells for $200,000, the buyer is no worse off. He still gets $200,000.
The broker does not contribute diddly to the value or utility of the house.
The higher percentage of commissions that are paid to brokers, the more all buyers will have to pay for homes. The broker is basically a parasite, and the role is rarely symbiotic.
Unless they are certifiably incompetent, all sellers should list their houses first without a broker. A company like Buy Owner can provide listings, as can the internet.
--------------------
When I bought my first house, I only looked at houses for sale by owner that allowed me to assume the mortgage and avoid the useless "closing cost" points (ie bribe to the bank to give the loan) .
Some friends recommended "excellent realtors". Not one of these schmoes would show me a house that was not several thousand more than my upper limit, nor would any of them tell me the square footage or even the school district. They all knew people that would be happy to loan me money at 10%, plus 5 points. This was in 1977, and the loan I assumed was for $8.5 and no points. Eventually I told the realtors that I didnt need any more help, and the most persistent I simply made appointments with I deliberately refused to keep, and that caused them to leave me the Hell alone.
Once I bought a beautiful sofa for only $100. The only problem was, it was not made for actual humans. It was made for realtors to use in demonstrating homes at developments, and was only 7/8th scale or perhaps smaller, and the wood frame was not very durable. It was the most uncomfortable damn sofa I have ever owned, and after a year the wood frame broke when a rather large friend came a-visiting. Crash! the damn thing split down the middle.
AS I said, it LOOKED beautiful. And I did not know that they even made smaller furniture so that some jackass realtor could give the impression that the rooms in the development were really smaller than the looked.
Many things that realtors do, suck. Like used car salesmen, they are essentially parasites.
